Google preps for Brussels wrist-slap Reports are emerging that European regulators have won a small victory over Google in their dispute about the impartiality or otherwise of the Chocolate Factory's search results. According to the New York Times, the antitrust investigation will end in the next couple of days with the European Commission accepting a settlement …
If by "commercial interests" you mean "links Google is paid to show to you", then I am pretty sure that they are labelled "Ads" or "Sponsored links"…
Yes, in a much smaller font than the rest of the site. If it wasn't too glaringly obvious they would have probably used light grey on white for the text.
You search because you seek a product, possibly from a supplier near you or otherwise subject to the search criteria you entered. You do not want a link that is basically generated on the basis of your search leading to one of those accumulators. If I wanted a large list of possible links I would have, err, searched for it?
The bigger problem is the abuse taking place right now. There are about a gazillion outfits buying ads with keywords like "Google support" and "Facebook" support which are basically scam artists - most have a couple of them on the go at the same time, because Google pulls them within the hour if notified (one cannot help observing that until then they happily collect the profit from the ad). The scammers make use of the fact that companies like Google and Facebook have palmed off their support to user forums, so people searching for a contact can indeed only find a scammer willing to take the call - at which point they usually get led into a script to install Logmein.com and pay lots of dosh for the privilege of being set up for a variety of blackmail techniques.
All of this is possible because Google very consciously minimises the difference between ads and search links - as far as I know they have been asked many times to change that so I'm glad they now (hopefully) have to.
I search because I want information, if I want to buy something I use the Shopping link or go to a dedicated store search engine. Trying to find reviews on products, especially tech such as motherboards or TVs is an absolute nightmare because even adding review to he search field brings up sellers for the first two pages due to customer reviews.
This is an issue that can be levelled at any search engine though not just Google.
I search because I want information,
Me too. Search results are filled up by hawkers and it destroys ability to search effectively for many things. Try searching on anything even remotely related to laptop batteries and the problem becomes extremely obvious. Why is it that it is assumed that I want to buy something? I rarely do, and these search results simply come across like a crowded street where everyone is coming up to you begging for money. It's actually really uncomfortable. Google isn't half as useful as it used to be.
But supermarkets do advertise their competitors for example Asda is always banging the "according to MySupermarket.com, Asda had x items cheaper than Tesco". They acknowledge they exist and offer a reason to shop with them instead.
Anyway your analogy should be that you go to Asda and you have only Asda own brand products to buy from and it's the only supermarket that you can reasonably get to. When people shop they want choice or they want cheap, in Google land the majority of the time they want what is at the top.
Actually that analogy is so far off the mark its moronic. Google does not advertise itself as a Google Product search engine, it describes itself as "Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful" (taken from the Google About page). This gives the false impression that Google returns impartial results when it does not.
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