Comment by echelon

If I want to get in touch with a company, I go through Google. It's not the brand's choice, it's not my choice. The brand has to pay for that. I, ultimately, also have to pay for that.

This is NOT okay. Google is using monopoly power to do this. They have inserted themselves as parasitic middle men. No different than a cymothoa exigua eating away at the tongue.

This is not advertising. It's a road bump. It's getting throttled by the mafia. It's a protection racket on people's hard-earned brands. A tax on cognition and communication.

Google is a villain here. They are not offering value or service or anything useful. They're extracting.

They're the Harvey Weinstein of the internet here -- nobody wants to do business with the guy, but he's there and he's asking you to do what he wants. You can go along, and do the thing, or you can say no and completely lose your customer.

The customer that already knows you by name. You made it this far. Now there's this gross middle man asking you to give up.

So you let Harvey Weinstein slip his hands in. Cost of doing business.

That's what Google is in this story.

This isn't advertising. It's the R-word, being perpetrated because of a lack of the other R word: healthy market regulation.

90 percent of all humans on the planet are being fleeced by this. Every time you put something into the URL bar, Google gets a piece of the action.

What I'm saying is, when these are brand names, this is theft. Highway robbery. Monopolistic pillaging.

Google needs a slap down.