Study Suggests Google Harms Consumers by Skewing Search Results
Study Suggests Google Harms Consumers by Skewing Search
Results
Yelp-sponsored research examines Google’s practice of
promoting its own search services
By Tom Fairless
June 29, 2015 4:18 a.m. ET
BRUSSELS—New research by two U.S. academics suggests
that Google Inc. is harming Internet
users and violating competition laws by skewing search results to favor its own
services, a potentially significant twist in Europe’s long-running antitrust
investigation of the U.S. search company.
The research combines statistical testing with detailed
legal and economic analysis to examine the ramifications of Google’s practice
of promoting its own specialized search services, such as for local restaurants
or doctors, at the expense of rivals such as Yelp and TripAdvisor.
It was sponsored by Yelp, which has filed a complaint
with European Union antitrust authorities over Google’s search practices. It
was presented to EU regulators on Friday.
The study’s authors— Michael Luca of Harvard Business
School and Tim Wu of Columbia Law School—found that users were 45% more likely
to click on results that were ranked purely by relevance, rather than as Google
ranks them now, with its own services displayed prominently.
“This suggests that by leveraging dominance in search to
promote its internal content, Google is reducing social welfare—leaving
consumers with lower quality results and worse matches,” the authors wrote.
The results, they went on, provide “empirical evidence”
that Google’s search practices have harmed consumers in some cases and as such
“cannot be described as pro-competitive.”
“The demonstration of consumer harm is, we think, an
important conclusion…that should influence any competition law analysis,” the
study says.
Mr. Wu is one of the most prominent academics in the
field of competition law and technology. A former adviser to the U.S. Federal
Trade Commission, he is known for coining the phrase “net neutrality,” the
principle that Internet service providers should enable access to all content
equally, without favoring or blocking particular products or websites.
One official at a European antitrust authority said any
study that showed Google caused “quantifiable harm” to consumers would
“certainly bring things forward” for EU regulators.
Those regulators “will be delighted to have as much
evidence as they can,” the official said.
EU antitrust chief
Margrethe Vestager formally charged Google in April with skewing results
to favor its comparison-shopping service, escalating a five-year investigation.
At issue is whether Google uses its 90% share of online searches in Europe to
squeeze competitors in related markets where it also competes.
The charges could lead to billions of euros in fines and
requirements for Google to change its business practices. Ms. Vestager said she
continues to examine other domains, such as travel and local services.
Google declined to comment on the new study. The company
has repeatedly denied breaking EU antitrust rules, and has said it strongly
disagreed with the need to issue formal charges.
On Monday Google said it had requested, and been granted,
more time to respond to the EU’s charges, in order to review documents related
to the case. The new response deadline is Aug. 17.
U.S. regulators closed their own investigation into
Google’s search practices two years ago after the company agreed to voluntary
changes.
Google has long argued that it serves users by
prioritizing its own specialized search services for areas such as maps and travel,
because it thereby answers users’ queries more precisely.
The academics agreed that might be true in some
instances, such as displaying time or solving arithmetic problems.
But in other instances, they argued that Google was
making its overall product worse for users to provide favorable treatment to
Google content.
The authors focused on searches for local services such
as restaurants or hotels, the largest single category of search requests. They
randomly displayed one of two sets of search-result screenshots to more than
2,500 Internet users. One set of users saw a page reflecting results currently
displayed by Google, while the other set saw a page that ranked third-party
review sites such as Yelp and TripAdvisor based on their relevance—using
Google’s own algorithm.
The survey found that 32% of users would click on
Google’s current local results, while 47% clicked on the alternative
merit-based results. That nearly 50% increase in the click rate is “immense in
the modern Web industry,” the authors wrote.
“Stated simply, when it comes to local search, Google is
presenting its users with a degraded version of its search engine,” the authors
wrote.
The experiment was carried out on an online platform,
UsabilityHub, that is used for testing website designs before a website is
introduced to the market.
The authors conceded that there were differences between
their click surveys and actual search results, and that they didn’t have access
to internal Google data to verify their results. They nevertheless
cross-checked the results using data from Yelp. The authors said the Yelp data
indicated they provided a reasonable estimate of actual user behavior.
In one example, users were asked where they would click
first on a screen showing results for “coffee Louisville ky.”
The authors argued that Google’s behavior could harm
consumers because they might not find what they were looking for in Google’s
own set of results; they took longer to find the information; or they ended up
patronizing a business that wouldn’t be their first choice.
Local results intrinsically have a lower number of
references from other sites or other measures of relevancy because they are of
interest only to a small portion of the web.
Choosing to rate Yelp or other company's results high or
low can only be done on the overall repute of that sources results as a whole,
not in any particular instance.
In the Yelp case, one might give their results low
relevance because of the acknowledged packing of results by shills or the
alleged manipulation of results by Yelp to extort payment for better placement.
There will never be a perfect web search oracle.
Consumers will still have to exercise judgement.
'Caveat emptor!' includes looking past the first three
results.
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