We Investigate Google’s Alleged Abuses of Power

Not a month seems to go by without Google being hauled up in front of some panel or other for some sort of abuse. And December’s no different.

This month, the panel in question is the European Commission’s antitrust investigation. And the alleged abuse? That Google has “abused a dominant position in online search”.

Google’s competitors (Bing, Yahoo, Ask, etc) have all claimed that they are treated unfavourably by Google’s search results, with Google’s own services recieving preferential treatment.

Here at FirstFound, we’ve decided to launch our own investigation, to see whether Google is fixing the rankings in its own favour…

Are Google Abusing Their Power?

The claim: Google’s searches are rigged in favour of Google, and against competing search providers.

The investigation: Searching Google UK to see whether Google puts itself at the top of searches. We’re using a fresh IP, with all history cleared. We’ve set the location to UK, instead of Manchester

1: Search Engine

We’re not sure whether getting a search engine to rank for search engine on Google is the sort of tactic that doesn’t fail miserably, but if Google rigs the results, surely Google.com will be number one.

It isn’t. Google.co.uk is 6th, after Dogpile, Wikipedia, Bing and two Altavista results. Admittedly they’re top on the sponsored links, but nobody’s ever claimed they’re unbiased.

Conclusion: Not rigged

2. Email

Google have really pushed Gmail. But it still has only half the users of MSN’s Hotmail and less than Yahoo Mail. If the results are rigged, then we’ll see Gmail ahead of Hotmail and Yahoo Mail.

Hmm. Hotmail’s number one, as it well should be, but Google Mail has sneaked in ahead of two Yahoo Mail results. Which begs a further question. Is one 2nd position ranking better than having 3rd and 4th?

Conclusion: Inconclusive.

3. News

This, for me at least, is the big one. Google News has already forced The Times behind a paywall, with the telegraph set to follow suit. So surely, if there’s one result that’s rigged against the competition, it’s “News”. If Google are rigging results, Google News should be top.

Well. That seems conclusive. Google News is down in 7th.

Conclusion: Well, News isn’t rigged.

So, Are Google Abusing Their Power?

We’ve only done a quick snapshot of Google’s results on three terms that the antitrust board might need to consider, but it doesn’t look like Google put all of their services at the top of the results automatically. But a more pertinent question might be this.

“Do Google have a duty to show unbiased results?”

They are a business after all.

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