Study: Google Favoring Its Own Services In Search Results
Google favors its own services in search results, according to a new study sponsored by a complainant in the EU antitrust trial against the company.
The study found that users are 45 percent more likely to click on search results organically generated by Google's own search engine than on results in which Google favors its own services, as it does now.
"This suggests that by leveraging dominance in search to promote its internal content, Google is reducing social welfare-leaving consumers with lower quality results and worse matches," the researchers noted in the study. The study "provides empirical evidence" that Google favoring its own products in some cases harms Google's users.
"Such conduct therefore cannot be described as procompetitive," said Tim Wu, a professor at Columbia Law School, and Michael Luca, an assistant professor at Harvard Business School.
The study was financially supported by Yelp, a site that allows users to review local businesses. Yelp is also one of the complainants fueling the European Commission's antitrust investigation into Google's search practices.
"Google appears to be strategically deploying universal search in a way that degrades the product so as to slow and exclude challengers to its dominant search paradigm," the researchers noted.
