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I wonder how many companies Google has wounded/killed with their search infopanels. For example, yesterday I searched for “speedtest” expecting Ookla’s speedtes

I wonder how many companies Google has wounded/killed with their search infopanels. For example, yesterday I searched for “speedtest” expecting Ookla’s speedtest.net to be the top result. Nope, now it’s a one-click speed test offered by Google at the top. Great for users, devastating for the sites at the top of the SERPs.

dpflan 7y ago
It’s the power of Google as a portal to the internet and search engine; clearly it is a powerful position to have: Google can access demand for a service, and once it reaches a certain threshold decide to throw resources at creating their own version to keep you in their ecosystem. I would like to know what Google team is in charge of using search trends to identify services to offer.
- devoply 7y ago
  What does Google gain? Maybe some data, and that's probably what this is about, getting speed test data from lots of users. But revenue wise I don't think it gains anything and sties currently offering the service go out of business over night. Why go after Genius, well probably because it has some peripheral business interest like Google music which is benefiting from this behavior.
  - dpflan 7y ago
    I can see: speedtest indicates an interest in checking internet service which could lead to internet in Google Fiber in a particular region: assuming GF is still functioning. This is probably a stretch. Yes, making a node that connects to another service seems like a goal.
    - dodobirdlord 7y ago
      Having a good idea of what kinds of internet speeds people have around the world is no doubt hugely useful for all sorts of things like planning Stadia[0]. But moreover, Google is a member of the M-Lab[1] project that runs the speedtest servers, so why not add the feature? [0]https://stadia.dev/ https://stadia.dev/ [1]https://www.measurementlab.net/ https://www.measurementlab.net/
      - Proven 7y ago
        Wut? Nobody complained about Google having it, but about it being fake-ranked by Google to appear above the more popular Okla.
  - malcolmwhite 7y ago
    Google wants to keep users at google.com so it can keep showing them ads. Each time a user clicks away to speedtest.net or genius.com, that is a missed opportunity for revenue.
    - jjeaff 7y ago
      Except it's very likely that those 3rd party sites are monetized with Google AdWords. But I guess Google can make a bit more by cutting out the middle man.
  - close04 7y ago
    > What does Google gain? ~20 years ago some people were wondering what does Google gain from giving free service. The point is Google is trying to be the one stop shop for the whole internet no matter what you need. Unfortunately I don't see anything changing for Google especially in the US where lobbying is such a cheap way to turn all legislation to their advantage.
- tachyonbeam 7y ago
  It's very similar to what Amazon does. They get information about demand for a certain product, and then make custom versions of the most popular third-party products sold on their site, competing directly with people who sell on their platform.
devoply 7y ago
It's a joke how trivial it is for Google to destroy these sort of sites.
kpU8efre7r 7y ago
If you search "Ookla speed test" or "speed test Ookla", then you get Ookla as the top result without seeing Google's panel. If you only search for "speed test", you get Google's panel followed by Ookla's. I see nothing wrong with this, they are giving users what they want.
- unreal37 7y ago
  Sure, they put themselves between users and content, and then they decided they should serve the content too. Amazon discovers the best selling third-party products on it's site, and then makes it's own version of them too. Everybody is doing it. Pretty soon, 5 companies will be serving up 99.9% of the content on the Internet. Nothing wrong with that. Nothing anyone here in startup land needs to worry about. Right?
  - HenryBemis 7y ago
    > Nothing wrong with that. (you are missing the /s) :) Oligopoly is nearly as bad as Monopoly. Τechnically once the big4 (plus a couple more) own the 99% of the traffic then we will have monopolies on each areas. Google on Search, Amazon on Shopping, Facebook on Socials, Apple on Phones. And on the outer circle a parasitic ad/tracking ecosystem working with these 4 monopolies. I am not a pescimist, but as nightmare scenarios go, I take it that this is a plausible one.
    - ianmobbs 7y ago
      Apple will never have a monopoly on phones, but it'll share that honor with Google.
    - dodobirdlord 7y ago
      I don't know how you imagine that Apple will have a monopoly on mobile phones. They don't even have a quarter of the market!
  - manfredo 7y ago
    When your search "calculator" are you angry that Google displays its own web calculator before returning 3rd party results? These are simple utilities, and I don't see why it's bad for Google to offer is own. In fact for web tests it's more useful to me. Much of what I access is Google services, so testing latency and throughput to their servers is better for me.
techbio 7y ago
Yellowpages and similar services proliferated about 10 years ago as way to capture passive AdSense revenue, but with many using outdated, incomplete, and often incorrect results. Those thousands of sites are now rendered unnecessary by Google's top box, street view, maps, menus, busy times, and other integrations. There is a clear path by which Google has arguably better served both search and advertising customers, at the expense of the publisher cost center, in this domain.
- jjeaff 7y ago
  And someone else could better serve Google's customers by scraping their search results and infopanels and serving up the content without any ads or tracking. Also, a company could better serve cable customers by recording all their content and stream it to customers charging a low monthly fee. Neither of these are much different from Google's practices in regards to their info panels.
  - falcor84 7y ago
    >And someone else could better serve Google's customers by scraping their search results and infopanels and serving up the content without any ads or tracking. Unlike your second example, this example doesn't make any sense to me. The amount of effort and infrastructure required to do a decent job at this would surely make it at least as expensive as the way Google does it. How could this be cost-effective without ads? I imagine that the amount of people who'd be willing to pay for the same search results that they could get from Google is in the low single digits.
    - tomglynch 7y ago
      Why not do it live? Then it would be much more cost effective.
      - freeone3000 7y ago
        It'd be cheaper, but you can't really make up for a loss on every sale by selling in volume.
marak830 7y ago
As a user, why should I care? If Google knocks out the competition and the deprecistes it another company will fill that space. I use a search engine to find information not to find a website that serves that. (Fyi i don't use good, I'm a ddg user) Edit: thumbs and smartphone :-)
- paul7986 7y ago
  Voting you up cause you use DDG :-) only Otherwise I think You would care if Google steals all your hard work.
  - marak830 7y ago
    Well as they scraped most of their data from other sites I wouldn't really call it hard work. Look I get it and I agree. I was posting from a users point of view. I'll happily accept the downvotes though :-)
i386 7y ago
I wonder how many companies Google has killed by entering the market , setting the price to free and then walking away when bored.
wmeredith 7y ago
Well, to be fair if they were only surviving because of Google’s SERP listings... it sort of seems like a live by the sword: die by the sword situation. If Google delisting your site destroys your business, there’s an argument to be made that they also created your business in the first place.
johnx123-up 7y ago
This guy predicted Google SEO bubble http://rajeshanbiah.blogspot.com/2018/01/technology-prediction-for-2018.html http://rajeshanbiah.blogspot.com/2018/01/technology-predicti...

dpflan 7y ago

It’s the power of Google as a portal to the internet and search engine; clearly it is a powerful position to have: Google can access demand for a service, and once it reaches a certain threshold decide to throw resources at creating their own version to keep you in their ecosystem. I would like to know what Google team is in charge of using search trends to identify services to offer.

devoply 7y ago
What does Google gain? Maybe some data, and that's probably what this is about, getting speed test data from lots of users. But revenue wise I don't think it gains anything and sties currently offering the service go out of business over night. Why go after Genius, well probably because it has some peripheral business interest like Google music which is benefiting from this behavior.
- dpflan 7y ago
  I can see: speedtest indicates an interest in checking internet service which could lead to internet in Google Fiber in a particular region: assuming GF is still functioning. This is probably a stretch. Yes, making a node that connects to another service seems like a goal.
  - dodobirdlord 7y ago
    Having a good idea of what kinds of internet speeds people have around the world is no doubt hugely useful for all sorts of things like planning Stadia[0]. But moreover, Google is a member of the M-Lab[1] project that runs the speedtest servers, so why not add the feature? [0]https://stadia.dev/ https://stadia.dev/ [1]https://www.measurementlab.net/ https://www.measurementlab.net/
    - Proven 7y ago
      Wut? Nobody complained about Google having it, but about it being fake-ranked by Google to appear above the more popular Okla.
- malcolmwhite 7y ago
  Google wants to keep users at google.com so it can keep showing them ads. Each time a user clicks away to speedtest.net or genius.com, that is a missed opportunity for revenue.
  - jjeaff 7y ago
    Except it's very likely that those 3rd party sites are monetized with Google AdWords. But I guess Google can make a bit more by cutting out the middle man.
- close04 7y ago
  > What does Google gain? ~20 years ago some people were wondering what does Google gain from giving free service. The point is Google is trying to be the one stop shop for the whole internet no matter what you need. Unfortunately I don't see anything changing for Google especially in the US where lobbying is such a cheap way to turn all legislation to their advantage.
tachyonbeam 7y ago
It's very similar to what Amazon does. They get information about demand for a certain product, and then make custom versions of the most popular third-party products sold on their site, competing directly with people who sell on their platform.

devoply 7y ago

It's a joke how trivial it is for Google to destroy these sort of sites.

kpU8efre7r 7y ago

If you search "Ookla speed test" or "speed test Ookla", then you get Ookla as the top result without seeing Google's panel. If you only search for "speed test", you get Google's panel followed by Ookla's. I see nothing wrong with this, they are giving users what they want.

unreal37 7y ago
Sure, they put themselves between users and content, and then they decided they should serve the content too. Amazon discovers the best selling third-party products on it's site, and then makes it's own version of them too. Everybody is doing it. Pretty soon, 5 companies will be serving up 99.9% of the content on the Internet. Nothing wrong with that. Nothing anyone here in startup land needs to worry about. Right?
- HenryBemis 7y ago
  > Nothing wrong with that. (you are missing the /s) :) Oligopoly is nearly as bad as Monopoly. Τechnically once the big4 (plus a couple more) own the 99% of the traffic then we will have monopolies on each areas. Google on Search, Amazon on Shopping, Facebook on Socials, Apple on Phones. And on the outer circle a parasitic ad/tracking ecosystem working with these 4 monopolies. I am not a pescimist, but as nightmare scenarios go, I take it that this is a plausible one.
  - ianmobbs 7y ago
    Apple will never have a monopoly on phones, but it'll share that honor with Google.
  - dodobirdlord 7y ago
    I don't know how you imagine that Apple will have a monopoly on mobile phones. They don't even have a quarter of the market!
- manfredo 7y ago
  When your search "calculator" are you angry that Google displays its own web calculator before returning 3rd party results? These are simple utilities, and I don't see why it's bad for Google to offer is own. In fact for web tests it's more useful to me. Much of what I access is Google services, so testing latency and throughput to their servers is better for me.

techbio 7y ago

Yellowpages and similar services proliferated about 10 years ago as way to capture passive AdSense revenue, but with many using outdated, incomplete, and often incorrect results. Those thousands of sites are now rendered unnecessary by Google's top box, street view, maps, menus, busy times, and other integrations. There is a clear path by which Google has arguably better served both search and advertising customers, at the expense of the publisher cost center, in this domain.

jjeaff 7y ago
And someone else could better serve Google's customers by scraping their search results and infopanels and serving up the content without any ads or tracking. Also, a company could better serve cable customers by recording all their content and stream it to customers charging a low monthly fee. Neither of these are much different from Google's practices in regards to their info panels.
- falcor84 7y ago
  >And someone else could better serve Google's customers by scraping their search results and infopanels and serving up the content without any ads or tracking. Unlike your second example, this example doesn't make any sense to me. The amount of effort and infrastructure required to do a decent job at this would surely make it at least as expensive as the way Google does it. How could this be cost-effective without ads? I imagine that the amount of people who'd be willing to pay for the same search results that they could get from Google is in the low single digits.
  - tomglynch 7y ago
    Why not do it live? Then it would be much more cost effective.
    - freeone3000 7y ago
      It'd be cheaper, but you can't really make up for a loss on every sale by selling in volume.

marak830 7y ago

As a user, why should I care? If Google knocks out the competition and the deprecistes it another company will fill that space. I use a search engine to find information not to find a website that serves that. (Fyi i don't use good, I'm a ddg user) Edit: thumbs and smartphone :-)

paul7986 7y ago
Voting you up cause you use DDG :-) only Otherwise I think You would care if Google steals all your hard work.
- marak830 7y ago
  Well as they scraped most of their data from other sites I wouldn't really call it hard work. Look I get it and I agree. I was posting from a users point of view. I'll happily accept the downvotes though :-)

i386 7y ago

I wonder how many companies Google has killed by entering the market , setting the price to free and then walking away when bored.

wmeredith 7y ago

Well, to be fair if they were only surviving because of Google’s SERP listings... it sort of seems like a live by the sword: die by the sword situation. If Google delisting your site destroys your business, there’s an argument to be made that they also created your business in the first place.

johnx123-up 7y ago

This guy predicted Google SEO bubble http://rajeshanbiah.blogspot.com/2018/01/technology-prediction-for-2018.html http://rajeshanbiah.blogspot.com/2018/01/technology-predicti...