TripAdvisor Joins Others In Complaint To EU Over Google's Alleged Anti-Competitive Practices

[engine]

TripAdvisor Joins Others In Complaint To EU Over Google's Alleged Anti-Competitive Practices [bbc.co.uk]

Holiday review site Trip Advisor has joined the swelling ranks of firms complaining to the European Commission about Google.

It joins travel firm Expedia and 11 others in accusing the search giant of abusing its dominant position, a claim being investigated by the commission.

EU commissioner Joaquin Almunia said a decision would be made after Easter over whether to formally charge Google.

Google denies claims of "anti-competitive and unfair practices".

[Marketing Guy]

"of abusing its dominant position"

Says the OTAs that regularly optimise for and bid on the brand terms of the companies they are listing, despite the fact they spent many years assuring hotels, etc they wouldn't...an exercise that effectively reduces the effectiveness of the hotel's own marketing activities, increases their costs and ultimate reliance on their services.

But it's unfair when Google does it... ;)

[skibum]

It seems like for anything travel you either get places or 1,000 listings from TA sites. I'm not sure how much room TA has to complain.

[Whitey]

I'm not sure how much room TA has to complain

Presumably it's not enough, and they worry that what they have, will be eroded by Google's continual push into the travel sector by owning all listings on their assets.

Personally, i find there too be a great disbalance in the overall page design, with not enough variety of listings, lack of organic inclusion and too many place listing to be useful or a good user experience. Certain aspects of travel have become a poorer user experience by excluding a balance in the mix IMO

Same applies to some other verticals. Who is Google proposing to become?

All this makes folks like TA work harder and faster to circumvent Google and build a better product.

[skibum]

TA seems to beat the crap out of Google Algorithms with all their different sites including country versions and various other sites they own. The TA content is better than the Google owned stuff that Google stuffs it's own results with but it gets a little old seeing the same TA content sliced and diced in different ways among the top-20 or more results.

[Whitey]

@skibum - I'm seeing a lot less TA content than before since the last Panda / Penguin updates.

If i'm right, then i wonder if Google acknowledged the dominance of TA's results in the SERP's. It did get a little tiring.