Google Steers Users To YouTube Over Rivals (wsj.com) 9
A Wall Street Journal investigation found that Google gives its online video service YouTube the advantage when choosing the best video clips to promote from around the web. From the report: Take a clip of basketball star Zion Williamson that the National Basketball Association posted online in January, when he made his highly anticipated pro debut. The clip was popular on Facebook Inc., drawing more than one million views and nearly 900 comments as of March. A nearly identical YouTube version of the clip with the same title was seen about 182,000 times and garnered fewer than 400 comments. But when The Wall Street Journal's automated bots searched Google for the clip's title, the YouTube version featured much more prominently than the Facebook version.
The Journal conducted Google searches for a selection of other videos and channels that are available on YouTube as well as on competitors' platforms. The YouTube versions were significantly more prominent in the results in the vast majority of cases. This isn't by accident. Engineers at Google have made changes that effectively preference YouTube over other video sources, according to people familiar with the matter. Google executives in recent years made decisions to prioritize YouTube on the first page of search results, in part to drive traffic to YouTube rather than to competitors, and also to give YouTube more leverage in business deals with content providers seeking traffic for their videos, one of those people said. A Google spokeswoman, Lara Levin, said there is no preference given to YouTube or any other video provider in Google search. "Our systems use a number of signals from the web to understand what results people find most relevant and helpful for a given query," Ms. Levin said. She declined to comment on the specific examples cited in the article.
The Journal conducted Google searches for a selection of other videos and channels that are available on YouTube as well as on competitors' platforms. The YouTube versions were significantly more prominent in the results in the vast majority of cases. This isn't by accident. Engineers at Google have made changes that effectively preference YouTube over other video sources, according to people familiar with the matter. Google executives in recent years made decisions to prioritize YouTube on the first page of search results, in part to drive traffic to YouTube rather than to competitors, and also to give YouTube more leverage in business deals with content providers seeking traffic for their videos, one of those people said. A Google spokeswoman, Lara Levin, said there is no preference given to YouTube or any other video provider in Google search. "Our systems use a number of signals from the web to understand what results people find most relevant and helpful for a given query," Ms. Levin said. She declined to comment on the specific examples cited in the article.
They Dont Steer Me (Score:2)
In fact all videos come up as broken on YouTube, no steering no where. I wonder why, could it possibly be because I pointed out Google was the most evil corporation on the planet for being the number one advertiser of mass consumption in the era of climate change. Hey you censorious pack o cunts, how about you self censor and cut out all those wasteful ads for ego driven purchases and stop being a such a rabid religious zealot of mass consumption. In the era of climate change, that makes you by far the most
Re: (Score:2)
If every vid on YT is "broken" for you, you either have your ISP blocking it, your firewall settings are blocking it, your browser is out of date, or you have improper configuration on your script and ad blockers.
Poor facebook (Score:1)
Where is the analysis of facebook pushing traffic to Google Youtube? Facebook is, was and will for ever be a closed shop, pushing people only on to Facebook. How can google show me a facebook post that since I don't have a facebook account I cannot see. They are for free and open web, not the closed off nearly compuserve version that facebook wants. Simply put its a very badly researched article paid for by facebook. I suppose WSJ has chosen sides.
How can the google algorithm understand the popularity of a
Everyone does this, but only Google is not allowed (Score:1)
So? Do these people think that the search engine is owned by the people or something? Google has a right to advertise their own services with priority over others. Next thing you're going to be telling me is that Comcast is advertising their cable service instead of pushing people to Netflix.
Don't like it? Use DuckDuckGo or some other service.
Re: (Score:2)
Google has a right to advertise their own services with priority over others.
They don't, that kind of monopoly abuse isn't allowed and can lead to heavy fines. Not so long ago Google was fined €2.42 billion [europa.eu] for giving their own shopping search results more prominence than the rest.
Re: (Score:1)
They aren't a monopoly though. There is an incredible amount of search engines and I even named an alternative. Being the most popular doesn't mean that they have a monopoly.
And that's fine and dandy in the EU, but has little merit in this situation. The EU considers "comparison shopping" as its own market, and that's why google was fined for recommending their own store over others. If they had instead removed all 3rd party stores, and only recommended their own, then there would be no issue nor fine. The
Silly complaint... (Score:2)
So you're telling me if you run a restaurant you're required to tell customers to go to competitors because your food is too good? Google isn't some public service where everyone including their competitors are treated equally. Of course they will promote their own stuff, it would be stupid not to.
Re: (Score:2)
So you're telling me if you run a restaurant you're required to tell customers to go to competitors because your food is too good?
No, but if you run the world's most popular restaurant guide and you consistently tell people to go to your restaurant because it's the best then that might be anticompetitive behavior.
Facebook problem? (Score:2)
From my experience the Google video search will give no special preference to Youtube, it feels like it's doing the opposite, Youtube videos can at times be very hard to find there and using Youtube's search directly will give much better result. That said, Facebook, Instagram and Co. hardly ever popup in regular searches. You might get a persons profile, but not individual posts. However is that Google's fault or Facebook's? To actually access large parts of Facebook, Instagram and Co. one needs to login o