Curious that legal threats and regulatory challenges came up in an interview discussion...
On the other hand, questioning Google's ranking algorithm for its own services, whether they receive a boost or not, that's entirely legitimate.
And considering that Google is a nearly a monopoly in search, they should be more transparent in regards to the ranking they are doing: it's not like the index isn't overblown with crap already, making concerns over spammers pretty moot.
For example, it would be against the rules to utilise ZoFreX's top 10 website list to display ZoFreX's skin cream website at the top of the list.
The key in this case is whether your other site that you are promoting is considered a different industry or market, and whether your monopoly in the top 10 lists market has unfairly influenced your position in another market.
There is probably a grey area if the list rankings were generated automatically in some way, but it could still be argued that knowledge of unpublished details of the list algorithms have given you a advantage, and unless you published full algorithm details you would probably be subject to accusations of fixing the list anyway. The rules are there to ensure that the markets remain competitive for others to do business in.
People use Google with an assumption that it's providing a realistic and balanced picture of the web. There's a degree of trust involved.
If Google chooses to manipulate results to provide commercial advantage to itself, then it's not meeting the assumptions of its users and can be accused of acting dishonestly.
ZoFreX's top 10 websites is at most going to affect the prosperity of 10 companies; Google is able to influence the success or failure of millions. When an organisation holds that much power, it has to act responsibly for the good of society. Government should help create conditions to ensure that companies have to act responsibly (so society can function well).
Google’s obligation is to user experience not to to self-proclaimed ‘competitors’, it should provide answers not send users sifting through another set of results or to conduct searches elsewhere.
And what if in the future search engines evolves beyond the ranking of blue links will the EU force Google not to change anything? And what about personalized search?
This is all quite ridiculous.
If that's not the case, i.e., products search is so close to generic web search that a distinction doesn't make sense, then Google is not abusing its monopoly but just enhancing its product.
I remember a blog post from the creator of "sushikartan.se" complaining about Google Maps entries being displayed on a search for "sushi stockholm" above his own website. That caused him a major loss in traffic, and he quite convincingly argues that his own search results and reviews are much better than Google's, so Google was (at least in that case) not really working in the user's best interest.
http://www.tedvalentin.com/2010/05/google-content-producer.h...
I personally think its legitimate behaviour from Google. They are not pushing some entirely unrelated product of theirs (e.g. GMail) but really trying to enhance their product (not always successfully, see sushikartan example above). And I'd be very surprised if they manually modified rankings of competitors like ciao on purpose. But I think it's a valid question to raise.
"We have consistently informed webmasters that our algorithms disadvantage duplicate sites," the firm said.
Search engines duplicate content by necessity, so this isn't really a very fair test when it's applied to Google's competitors (i.e. sites providing search for specific areas and industries).
It's entirely unreasonable to state 'these are the rules, we're simply sticking to them', when the rules have been set by the organisation in question.
No matter how much desire there is to project (and enforce) a healthy, non-stifling culture - when an organisation reaches a large size, the stake individuals are responsible for grows, and (some) people will act recklessly and aggressively to provide gains for the organisation in question.
When an organisation or company grows to a very large size, I think it can become analogous to a large pike in a small pond, consuming almost everything it can.
Our economic system isn't the pure system many people wish it was - it's not perfect. As much as I like the idea of a free-market, I think intervention is necessary.
The last complaint is correct however. Googles user requirements for its adservices prohibits webmasters from placing other contextual ads on the site. I wonder why nobody has complaind before (its not exactly a secret, it was written in the agreement).
