{"id":176178,"date":"2020-08-16T19:51:00","date_gmt":"2020-08-17T00:51:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2020\/08\/16\/google-being-evil\/"},"modified":"2020-08-16T19:51:00","modified_gmt":"2020-08-17T00:51:00","slug":"google-being-evil","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2020\/08\/16\/google-being-evil\/","title":{"rendered":"Google Being Evil"},"content":{"rendered":"
Google is using the data that it collects from travel agencies as a part of its ad sales to set up its own competing services<\/a>.<\/div>\n

This is not a surprise. This is what Google does, leveraging its monopoly position on search, and now online advertising, to crush competitors:<\/p>\n

As the antitrust drumbeat continues to pound on tech giants<\/a>, with Reuters<\/a> reporting comments today from the U.S. Justice Department that it\u2019s moving \u201cfull-tilt\u201d on an investigation of platform giants including Google parent Alphabet, startups in Europe\u2019s travel sector are dialing up their allegations of anti-competitive behavior against the search giant. <\/p>\n

Google <\/a> has near complete grip on the search market in Europe, with a regional market share in excess of 90%, according to Statcounter<\/a>. Unsurprisingly, industry sources say a majority of travel bookings start as a Google search \u2014 giving the tech giant huge leverage over the coronavirus-hit sector<\/a>. <\/p>\n

More than half a dozen travel startups in Germany are united in a shared complaint that Google is abusing its search dominance in a number of ways they argue are negatively impacting their businesses. <\/p>\n

Complaints we\u2019ve heard from multiple sources in online travel range from Google forcing its own data standards on ad partners to Google unfairly extracting partner data to power its own competing products on the cheap. <\/p>\n

Startups are limited in how much detail they can provide on the record about Google\u2019s processes because the company requires advertising partners to sign NDAs to access its ad products. But this week German newspaper Handelsblatt<\/a> reported on antitrust complaints from a number of local startups \u2014 including experience booking platform GetYourGuide<\/a> and vacation rental search engine HomeToGo<\/a> \u2014 which are accusing the tech giant of stealing content and data. <\/p>\n

The group is considering filing a cartel complaint against Google, per its report. <\/p>\n

We\u2019ve also heard from multiple sources in the European travel sector that Google has exhibited a pattern of trying to secure the rights to travel partners\u2019 content and data through contracts and service agreements. <\/p>\n

One source, who did not wish to be identified for fear of retaliation against their business, told us: \u201cEach travel partner has certain specialities in their business model but overall the strategy of Google has been the same: Grab as much data from your partners and build competing products with that data.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/p>\n

Google defends this type of expansion by saying it\u2019s just making life easier for the user by putting sought for information even closer to their search query. But competitors contend the choices it\u2019s making are far more insidious. Simply put, they\u2019re better for Google\u2019s bottom line \u2014 and will ultimately result in less choice and innovation for consumers \u2014 is the core argument. The key contention is Google is only <\/i>able to do this because it wields vast monopoly power in search, which gives it unfair access to travel rivals\u2019 content and data. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s certainly notable that Alphabet hasn\u2019t felt the need to shell out to acquire any of the major travel booking platforms since its ITA acquisition. Instead, its market might allow it to repackage and monetize rival travel platforms\u2019 data via an expanding array of its own vertical travel search products. <\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is why the internet giants need to be regulated as utilities, and why we should consign Robert Bork’s corrupt and ahistorical antitrust analysis needs to be put in the dust-bin of history.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Google is using the data that it collects from travel agencies as a part of its ad sales to set up its own competing services. This is not a surprise. This is what Google does, leveraging its monopoly position on search, and now online advertising, to crush competitors: As the antitrust drumbeat continues to pound …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[365,368,364,367,479,660],"class_list":["post-176178","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-business","tag-corruption","tag-evil","tag-internet","tag-monopoly","tag-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176178"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=176178"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176178\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=176178"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=176178"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=176178"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}