>The Court of Justice said Google’s practice of favoring its own shopping search results over rival services “was discriminatory.” The ruling can't be appealed.
>Judges said that EU law forbids behavior that prevents “the maintenance or growth of competition in a market in which the degree of competition is already weakened, precisely because of the presence of one or more undertakings in a dominant position.”
Gonna be interesting to see if Amazon also gets hit by this very same thing as they seem to push their "Amazon Basics" brand above competitors too in their "market place".
With respect to the marketplace seller data, Amazon commits to refrain from using non-public data relating to, or derived from, the activities of independent sellers on its marketplace, for its retail business that competes with those sellers. This would apply to both Amazon's automated tools and employees that could cross-use the data from Amazon Marketplace, for the purposes of retail decisions. The relevant data would cover both individual and aggregate data, such as sales terms, revenues, shipments, inventory related information, consumer visit data or seller performance on the platform. Amazon commits not to use such data for the purposes of selling branded goods as well as its private label products.
In relation to the Buy Box Amazon commits:
- to apply equal treatment to all sellers when ranking their offers for the purposes of the selection of the winner of the Buy Box;
- and in addition, to display a second competing offer to the Buy Box winner if there is a second offer that is sufficiently differentiated from the first one on price and/or delivery. Both offers will display the same descriptive information and provide for the same purchasing experience. This will enhance consumer choice.
Lastly, regarding Prime Amazon commits:
- to set non-discriminatory conditions and criteria for the qualification of marketplace sellers and offers to Prime;
- to allow Prime sellers to freely choose any carrier for their logistics and delivery services and negotiate terms directly with the carrier of their choice;
- not to use any information obtained through Prime about the terms and performance of third-party carriers, for its own logistics services. This is to ensure that carriers' data is not flowing directly to Amazon's competing logistics services.
The commitments would remain in force for five years. Their implementation would be monitored by a monitoring trustee who would report regularly to the Commission.
I feel like companies like Amazon are large enough that they will find other hidden ways to do the same unethical things. Their size is fundamentally a problem.
Maybe a better example where the search is for "e-book color" and the listing for the Paperwhite doesn't match either "e-book" or "color", so it's not ranking high because it's matching the search terms well with the titles but seemingly because of something else: https://i.imgur.com/BoUjPPv.png
Why wouldn't a Paperwhite return with "e-book"? And given the results it's way more reviewed and probably way more popular than the other listings there.
And you searched what could be translated to "sleeve" or "cover". The hard drive sleeve has way more reviews and engagement than the rest, by a massive margin.
I hate Amazon search for many reasons, but this seems to be a reach of examples. Show me an example where the alternatives have equal review counts but are pushed way below the Amazon listings or way more specifically excluding terms. If you had searched for an iPhone case and it returned a hard drive sleeve I'd think there was something funny going on, but not with these examples.
The search is "e-book color", if a product doesn't mention "color" or similar in it's title, description or metadata, I don't expect it to show up. No other black and white e-readers seems to show up, only Paperwhite is the black&white reader that shows up.
> And you searched what could be translated to "sleeve" or "cover".
The search engine seems to think I'm searching for either a laptop cover or smartphone/tablet cover, as every single result on the first page are in those categories. Except, for the Amazon Basics one, which coincidentally also ranks highest.
I'm not putting these out there as "This is definitely proof Amazon is fucking with the search rankings" but more like "These results don't really seem to match what I expect or what I get at other similar websites".
> Paperwhite doesn't match either "e-book" or "color"
> either "e-book" or "color"
A Paperwhite most definitely matches "e-book". Very strongly.
Most fuzzy searches have multiple weighting parameters in the algo. You're right, it doesn't match "color" very strongly, but the fact it has >7k reviews and "5+ million sold last month" compared to 31 reviews its match for "e-book" probably has a pretty massive weighting. It's probably 1,000x stronger in its natural weight in terms of overall sales and engagement to anything else related to "e-book". I mean, its 400, 50, 50, and an undisclosed amount sold last month compared to five million.
That item is the lowest cost of the options depicted, and has more reviews (which are proportional to sales) than the rest combined. I think most algorithms would put it on top.
The results for the search "funda" are all smartphone or tablet covers, or covers for laptop. Except for that one Amazon Basics product which is a cover/protector for hard-drives.
Below its ranking (scrolling, not visible in the screenshot) are products with exact same score + more reviews + "funda" in the title. Shouldn't those, by your understanding, rank above the Amazon Basic product then?
Maybe; depending on their age, the content of the product page (videos, comparisons, etc.), delivery time, and the rate at which those who see the listing purchase it (after searching funda). I am guessing that Amazon uses some sort of Bayesian+ algorithm to figure out what to list.
How about non-online stores? In the US many major chain stores have their own brands. For example in grocery stores Safeway has their Signature Select brand, and Walmart has Great Value. In electronics Best Buy has Insignia, and Walmart has Onn.
Might be a distinction here because Google doesn't actually sell the products whereas Amazon is the actual retailer. Google is promoting their link to the product -- potentially even over the exact same retailer's direct link -- to take a cut.
>The Court of Justice said Google’s practice of favoring its own shopping search results over rival services “was discriminatory.” The ruling can't be appealed.
>Judges said that EU law forbids behavior that prevents “the maintenance or growth of competition in a market in which the degree of competition is already weakened, precisely because of the presence of one or more undertakings in a dominant position.”