It's the entire business model of aggregators and intermediaries and middle men, which compose roughly half the world's working population.
Is this appropriate behavior by the taxi driver?
Would a regular person consider this deserving of punishment?
Is Google's search results advertising bidding system ethically equivalent to this?
That sounds like it only works if my time that they wasted for selfish gain is valued at $0, which is obviously true as far as they are concerned, but certainly isn't true to me.
What Google is doing is more like taking your destination, then asking "hey, you might like this other steakhouse more, want to give that a try instead?" before driving. Potentially annoying if the answer is always no, but... the answer isn't always no.
The reason this happens is because the Google result shows my words in the excerpt, but when I click in, there's zero percent of the content to be found. That feels like a bait-and-switch akin to the taxi analogy.
My relevant results now either don't exist, or is in an absolute sea of mind-bogglingly bad results that it wears me out such that I would rather have had no results to begin with.
In this sense, I feel like Google is absolutely purposefully showing me results that I didn't want to go to.
This happens in real life all the time. Cab drivers get kick backs from specific places they have relationships with if they deliver people there, so you have to wonder whether they're actually recommending a better place for you or a better place for them, just like you do with Google.
And yes, I've been referred to a place by a cab driver when asking for a recommendation and found it didn't actually serve my needs at all, and in retrospect it was obvious from the conversation I was steered there without care for what I really wanted.
I’ve seen this too, but I’ve always assumed it has to do with meta tags or something.
How much is Google charging you for your searches? I get them for free. Sure, sometimes it's a pain to scroll down past the ad results when they're not relevant but it only costs me time and attention.
That’s what the ad does. It adds a bit of cognitive load where you have to view and then ignore the non-William Sonoma ad but ultimately, and without much fuss, let’s you go off to WS.
> ethically equivalent
No. Google ads are fine when seen this way. The can driver’s behavior is more egregious if their decision to take a detour isn’t communicated to you AND runs up your fare by enough to materially affect you, whatever that level may be.
Disclosure - I’m actively trying to un-Google my life so definitely not a fanboy.
If the cab ride was free sure, but you are explicitly paying for a cab to take you to your intended route.
HUGE difference.
Nobody forced you in that free taxi, you got in on your own. Use another service if you don't like the cost of "free" (ads).
All too often the middleman is milking both sides.
Google has value due to the search engine capabilities. But people realising they are being milked changes the value proposition.
I think Google is safe for now, though I don't think that is a good thing.
By definition a middleman is milking both sides. Were a middleman not there, it would definitionally be better for both parties. The only case where this is not true is the one where the middleman makes no money
For example, do you buy off Amazon or NewEgg, Best Buy, etc or do you just use Craigslist, Ebay, the local paper, or even the local flea/market swap meet for electronics? You can probably find stuff for half as much or even less at some of those locations, but it might cost you a lot in research time or lost money in the end...
To rephrase, all too often middlemen are there because of legislative/financial props from government or other incumbent advantages and - as you say - both sides would be better without them.
In this case - as in many middlemen cases - Google provides value - their search services. This "value" is the hook for their place in the transaction.
If Google provided a useless list of random results for every search term then it is obvious they would lose their place.
But where is the crossover point? Where Google doesn't provide enough perceived value compared to their perceived cost such that the market abandons them?
Peoples growing dislike of ads and - from this article - advertisers changing perception of ad value will change the cost vs value equation.
But I still think Google is safe for now.
