Google Making Online Shopping Worse?

JH
John Honovich
Jul 09, 2017
IPVM

A few weeks ago Google was fined $2.7 billion for violating EU antitrust rules.

Here is an interesting opinion piece from an anti-trust attorney: You should be outraged at Google’s anti-competitive behavior. Money quote:

Google painstakingly executed a strategy to increase its search-ad revenue by making it both possible and necessary for merchants to raise prices to consumers, as a review of studies from the E.U., the U.S. Federal Trade Commission and others show. And as a result, Google’s ad revenue has soared at the expense of its users.

I have noticed this myself over the years. A number of years ago, Google made it easy to find low price options for items (e.g., IP cameras). How, Google leads with providers who pay them (i.e. sponsors) and buries other sources, e.g.:

 

What do you think? Any other places that are better to price search for products like video surveillance?

Avatar
Mike Rose
Jul 09, 2017

You are putting yourself out of business.  If you as a re-seller are doing this, so is your customer

better to be selling your surveillance as an installed service rather than hawking a particular brand.  Opening yourself up to lower margins when selling by price.

 

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JH
John Honovich
Jul 09, 2017
IPVM

Mike, I tend to agree in general about your advice for a seller. That said, how does that relate to what Google is doing here? Are you for or against Google's practice here?

Avatar
Mike Rose
Jul 09, 2017

Let the buyer beware.

It is Google, and they are going to do what they are can get away with.

They have been good enough to say sponsored search.  When I am looking, I tend to go to the bottom of the page, or look for the companies web site.

My experience has been the companies buying their produce this way are the weaker integrators

There are other search engines.

Does no make any difference whether I agree or disagree.  Only the market place will make them change.

If you do not like it, stop using Google.  

 

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JH
John Honovich
Jul 10, 2017
IPVM

Only the market place will make them change.

The EU just fined them $2.7 billion. Are you saying that government regulation wont impact them or that it should not?

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U
Undisclosed #1
Jul 10, 2017

 

I didn't think anyone actually bought things off of what is recommended on google, but I guess I shouldn't be surprised.

Anyone who doesn't do their own research for themselves to determine what to buy is pretty well deserving of what they get.

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JH
John Honovich
Jul 10, 2017
IPVM

Anyone who doesn't do their own research for themselves to determine what to buy is pretty well deserving of what they get.

In this case, about finding low price, it's something that computers are capable of doing a very good job. However, Google, instead of facilitating that is restricting search results to only those who pay them often a fairly substantial click through rate / fee.

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U
Undisclosed #1
Jul 10, 2017

Per your note above about the EU fining them $2.7B, that is basically the last thing that is relevant in my book. It doesn't take a very long look at recent history to find dozens of examples of the EU being egregiously anti-business. This is yet another example. If I'm using Google to search for something, then I'd be an idiot to think that anything on the "Google" shop wasn't also directly benefiting Google. The very idea that Google is being penalized for steering people that search on its website to products that can also be purchased on its website is totally asinine. Google is basically being treated as a utility, something to be regulated for the protection of consumers, and not as a business that has built and leveraged the most ubiquitous search platform in the world.

Let me say this another way --

Google's job is not to protect consumers from themselves by giving all of Google's competitors a fair shake. Google's job is to make money for it's shareholders. Anyone stupid enough to trust the results of any single entity when making buying decisions is fully deserving of what they get.

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JH
John Honovich
Jul 10, 2017
IPVM

Google is basically being treated as a utility, something to be regulated for the protection of consumers, and not as a business that has built and leveraged the most ubiquitous search platform in the world.

Yes, that is essentially what is happening.

(1) Because of Google's increasing dominance of search engine traffic and online advertising

(2) Because Google leverages that to do things like this:

Quoting internal Google documents and emails, the report shows that the company created a list of rival comparison shopping sites that it would artificially lower in the general search results, even though tests showed that Google users “liked the quality of the [rival] sites” and gave negative feedback on the proposed changes.

It's like Google's old motto of 'Don't Be Evil' except it's the opposite.

 

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Avatar
Craig Mc Cluskey
Jul 11, 2017

It's like Google's old motto of 'Don't Be Evil' except it's the opposite.

So now Google's motto seems to be, "Be Evil if you can get away with it" ...

 

My default search engine is https://www.goodsearch.com/, which is powered by Yahoo and which allows one to specify a charity to be given one cent per search.

My second and third choices are https://duckduckgo.com/ and https://www.ixquick.com/, both of which do not track one's searches.

I use NoScript to block doubleclick.net (see The Guardian's article)

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UI
Undisclosed Integrator #2
Jul 11, 2017

I have to agree with UI1. Google is providing a service to it's users and has no obligation to it's users/competitors to offer "fair" advertisement. If you don't like how Google is manipulating their algorithm to their advantage use another search engine.  

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UI
Undisclosed Integrator #3
Jul 17, 2017

If you're buying a lot of cameras you will save money in the long run by starting an account with a distributor. What you find online should be around MSRP, and often is not warrantied at all or as well as a distributor. You will find much better prices and RMA processes through companies that specialize in this.

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JH
John Honovich
Jul 17, 2017
IPVM

What you find online should be around MSRP

Our experience has been the opposite. Since we generally buy 1 item of each product we test, we regularly buy online and often the online price is close to the 'regular' dealer price (this goes for many brands, including Axis and Hikvision).

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