Does Google rule the world?

Google handles 80% of European web searches, according to ComScore, compared to 65% in the US. Does this give Google a Monopoly over search  - and more importantly the advertising revenue that search engines attract?

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This week there has been a enquiry by the European Commission into three separate allegations that Google’s ‘so called’ democratic style search is being adapted by Google . They claim that Google are demoting competing websites in favour of their own services in the search results. Google will sometimes insert  links into results offering its own own specialist services – news, price comparison, maps or book search. Competitors claim this diverts traffic away from rival services.

The commission has sent out questionnaires seeking information about complaints from a British vertical search company called Foundem, a French legal search engine called eJustice and the shopping site, Ciao, which is owned by Microsoft.

Many SEO and Search companies will be rejoicing in the fact that the commission is taking the issue seriously. This enquiry should shake up Google – who will be aware that the commission has previously levied huge financial penalties on Microsoft and Intel in recent years for using tactics to squash competing software.

Google is claiming that the attack has been orchestrated by Microsoft, which recently merged its search business with Yahoo’s in an effort to challenge Google. They have pointed out Microsoft’s interest in Foundem - which is part of a trade grouping sponsored by Microsoft called the “Initiative for a Competitive Online Marketplace” –  and also their ownership of Ciao.

This is not the first time Google has been under fire:

• Google has also been under attack by thousands of authors fighting plans by Google to digitise the contents of millions of books.
• Google is being challenged in Italy about YouTube content, on the grounds of invasion of privacy.
• Newspapers have recently attacked Google for the free use of their content on Google News.
• Vodafone is trying to initiate an investigation into Google’s 80% share of the mobile phone search market.

Google claims that it’s algorithm is fair and democratic, they claim that it is processed by computers not humans and is therefore completely objective. It considers more than 200 factors, including the content and how many sites are linking to them.

However there are times that they use human intelligence to intervene,  some Google employees have the power to override its systems. The main focus of the review in Brussels is “does Google use its overwhelming position in the search business to suppress competition”?

Foundem has spent three years fighting over its ranking on Google – and they claim to have evidence that Google’s employees sometimes consider adjusting search results manually when paying customers complain.

Google’s latest response to the European Commission’s preliminary enquiry came at 9.51 AM (US time) on the 2nd of March (see what they had to say here). This may be a strong defence but what’s worrying is the focus on algorithms and open policy without a mention of the more worrying allegations about manual demotion of websites.

The Adwords system determines how prominently to place an advert; generally advertisers who bid more receive greater prominence, however Google adjusts this in line with a “quality score” based on its assessment of their web pages. Central to Foundem’s complaint is that its quality scores inexplicably fell, driving its cost per hit from 5p to £5. Was this because it is also a Google competitor? Foundem claims to have emails proving that Google employees have explicitly overridden these automated judgements. They claim to have a message from a Google employee that the Adwords team had “facilitated a change in the quality score” for Foundem. Adwords employees also said they had asked internally for Foundem to be “white listed” in Google’s main search engine – in other words, to be given a higher ranking than it was being accorded by the company’s algorithms.

The problem for businesses is that they have no control over which search engine consumers use, so they are all at the mercy of Google and Adwords. Will there ever be a competitor strong enough to break Google’s increasing stranglehold?

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Adwords, Ciao, eJustice, European Commission, Foundem, google, Google Analytics Course, Google Analytics Training, Google Monopoly, Intel, Microsoft, search, search engine, sussex, Yahoo

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