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Comment by freeone3000

7 months ago

When a large search engine deranks spam websites, the spam websites complain! Loudly! With Google they have a big juicy target with lots of competing ventures for an antitrust case; no such luck for Kagi or DDG.

3 comments

freeone3000

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baryphonic  7 months ago

This is an interesting theory. Is there evidence that it's happening? Is Big SEO unreasonably effective at lobbying the Justice Department?

  • freeone3000  7 months ago

    It’s definitely a concern where I work (not Google). Deranking anybody who happens to share a vertical we’re in is colorable as an anticompetitive action[0], and due to our dominance in another sector (not search), effectively any anticompetitive action anywhere is a no-go. And since we don’t have time to review whether a particular competitor also competes in one of our verticles and run everything by legal, nothing gets de-ranked manually.

    0: for context, us doj does not take antitrust action against companies simply for market dominance; it requires market dominance plus an anticompetitive action. However, they don’t like monopolies, so effectively any pretext can be used — see the apple lawsuit or the 90s ms lawsuits for how little it takes.