A high-profile study that might make it harder for Google to fight antitrust regulations accuses the search engine giant of degrading results for third-party services and promotes reviews on its own services.
The study is titled “Is Google degrading search? Consumer Hard from Universal Search” and was written by Harvard assistant professor Michael Luca and The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires author Tim Wu with the Yelp Data Science Team. So while it was funded by Yelp - one of Google’s chief rivals - the study is interesting in that Wu had previously been a Google ally, notes Bloomberg Business. He famously coined the “network neutrality” phrase and helped the FCC write regulations that Google preferred.
However, in this study, Wu takes aim at Google, complaining that it harms consumers by highlighting results and reviews on its own sites.
The study found that 45 percent of the Internet users polled are likely to click merit-based search results. But by keeping Google results at the top and often hiding better results from services that are not on Google services, Google is “reducing social welfare,” the authors note, reports ZDNet.
The study is based largely on the use of an app called Focus On The User, which uses Google’s search algorithm, but takes away Google Plus results.
“Google appears to be strategically deploying universal search in a way that degrades the product so as to slow and exclude challengers to its dominant search paradigm,” Wu and Luca wrote.
Wu called the study a “game changer” and convinced him that Google is a monopoly.
“It's a legal exercise of monopoly if it hurts competitors while helping consumers, but if it hurts consumers while also hurting competitors, then there is no justification for the conduct,” Wu wrote.
You can read the entire study right here.
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