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GOOGLE HAS CLAIMED that a bug was the reason for burying rival services in its search results, and is fixing it.
The CEOs from two major companies, TripAdvisor and Yelp, complained about the issue, saying that searching for locations on mobile would prioritise Google’s own service ahead of others.
Even when putting down the name of a rival company, the same thing would occur.
Jeremy Stoppelman / TwitterOh @Google you do what now? pic.twitter.com/zfIcXOu65Z
— Jeremy Stoppelman (@jeremys) November 22, 2015
stephen kaufer / TwitterGimme a break, @google. Search for "tripadvisor hilton" puts the tripadvisor link so far down you can't see it. https://t.co/fy1yO7ukDq
— stephen kaufer (@kaufer) November 22, 2015
Jeremy Stoppelman / Twitter.@kaufer no limit to how far @google will go, tricking consumers when they ask for Yelp or Trip. Everybody loses. pic.twitter.com/Ft6Epniws4
— Jeremy Stoppelman (@jeremys) November 22, 2015
But Google claim that such results are down to a bug instead of a deliberate choice, telling Re/Code ”the issues cited were caused by a recent code push, which we’re working quickly to fix”.
The companies involved aren’t buying it though, saying Google is trying to avoid criticism by describing it as such.
Jeremy Stoppelman / TwitterGoogle sounding about as truthful as Trump, web search becoming a dirty business of burying your competition. https://t.co/r8Jd0cGQuJ
— Jeremy Stoppelman (@jeremys) November 24, 2015
Google has been accused many times of favouring its own products ahead of other rival companies. The European Union has been carrying out antitrust investigations into the company’s products including its dominant position in search, advertising, and now an investigation into Android.
The latter is a “high priority” according to the EU antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager, who told the Wall Street Journal these investigations would be treated separately instead of as one main case.
The one that I opened myself on Android, we also give high priority but it is a different creature than the Google case because people don’t think so much about the operating system on their phone. But those who produce phones or sell phones or develop applications, they are very preoccupied with the operating system. So we give that a high priority.
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Yeah…right
How convenient @Google..Come up with a less silly explanation…
its a ‘feature’
Its completely unfair for google to piggyback off other companies keywords because they ‘can’. Google used to prioritise its users by working hard to provide the most relevant search results, if i use the word ‘tripadviser’ in my search i expect the most relevant results to be tripadvisor pages, not google’s own. Annoying to say the least.
So what. Ask google a question and is hardly going to say ask your mother now is it?
Delighted hope they bury them altogether if you have ever had to deal with trip advisor and Yelp you would be delighted with this .
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