谷歌搜索组建discuz!_Google的热门搜索结果？惊喜！是谷歌-CSDN博客

谷歌搜索组建discuz!

By Adrianne Jeffries and Leon Yin

艾德里安·杰弗里斯和尹昂

In Google’s early years, users would type in a query and get back a page of 10 “blue links” that led to different websites. “We want to get you out of Google and to the right place as fast as possible,” co-founder Larry Page said in 2004.

在 Google成立之初，用户会输入查询并返回10个指向不同网站的“蓝色链接”页面。联合创始人拉里·佩奇(Larry Page)“我们希望尽快将您带离Google并到达正确的位置” 在2004年说过。

Today, Google often considers that “right place” to be Google, an investigation by The Markup has found.

如今，The Markup的一项调查发现，Google经常认为“正确的地方”就是Google。

We examined more than 15,000 recent popular queries and found that Google devoted 41 percent of the first page of search results on mobile devices to its own properties and what it calls “direct answers,” which are populated with information copied from other sources, sometimes without their knowledge or consent.

我们检查了超过15,000个最近流行的查询，发现Google在移动设备上将搜索结果首页的41％专用于其自己的属性以及所谓的“ 直接答案 ”，这些答案中填充了从其他来源复制的信息，有时没有他们的知识或同意。

When we examined the top 15 percent of the page, the equivalent of the first screen on an iPhone X, that figure jumped to 63 percent. For one in five searches in our sample, links to external websites did not appear on the first screen at all.

当我们检查页面的前15％时(相当于iPhone X的第一个屏幕)时，该数字跃升至63％。对于我们样本中的五分之一搜索，指向外部网站的链接根本没有出现在第一个屏幕上。

A trending search in our data for “myocardial infarction” shows how Google has piled up its products at the top. It returned:

在我们的“心肌梗塞” 数据中，趋势搜索表明Google如何将其产品排在首位。它返回：

Google’s dictionary definition.
Google的字典定义。
A “people also ask” box that expanded to answer related questions without leaving the search results page.
“人们也问”框扩展为回答相关问题，而无需离开搜索结果页面。
A “knowledge panel,” which is an abridged encyclopedia entry with various links.
“知识面板”，是具有各种链接的简化的百科全书条目。
And a “related conditions” carousel leading to various new Google searches for other diseases.
以及“相关条件”轮播会导致Google针对其他疾病进行各种新的搜索。

All of these appeared before search results by WebMD, Harvard University, and Medscape. In fact, a user would have to scroll nearly halfway down the page — about 42 percent — before reaching the first “organic” result in that search.

所有这些都出现在WebMD，哈佛大学和Medscape的搜索结果之前。实际上，用户必须先滚动到页面的一半左右(大约42％)，然后才能获得该搜索的第一个“有机”结果。

Google’s decision to place its products above competitors’ and to present “answers” on the search page has led to lawsuits and regulatory fines. A number of websites said it killed their revenues — and their companies. Founders of both innovative startups and companies that had been around for a decade or more told The Markup that once Google started placing its product first, they didn’t stand a chance.

Google决定将其产品置于竞争对手之上，并在搜索页面上显示“答案”，这导致了诉讼和监管罚款。许多网站表示，这损害了他们的收入以及他们的公司。创新创业公司和已经存在了十年或更长时间的公司的创始人都对The Markup表示，一旦Google开始将其产品放在首位，他们就没有机会了。

Travel research firm Skift wrote in November that the entire online travel industry is suffering. “The fact that Google is leveraging its dominance as a search engine into taking market share away from travel competitors is no longer even debatable.”

旅游研究公司Skift在11月写道，整个在线旅游行业正在遭受苦难。 “谷歌正在利用其作为搜索引擎的优势来夺取旅游竞争对手的市场份额这一事实，甚至不再值得商”。”

The choice to highlight its own products has been deliberate: Internal emails unearthed by the European Commission in an antitrust investigation show Google staffers discussing the need to place its comparison-shopping product at the top of the search results to garner traffic. An email the following year noted traffic to the retooled product had more than doubled from four million to 10 million visits, and “most of this growth is from improved google.com integration.”

突出展示自己的产品的选择是经过深思熟虑的：欧盟委员会在一次反托拉斯调查中发掘出的内部电子邮件显示，谷歌员工讨论了将其比较购物产品放在搜索结果顶部以吸引访问量的必要性。次年的一封电子邮件中指出，经过重新设计的产品的访问量从四百万次访问增加到一千万次，增长了一倍以上，“其中大部分增长来自改进的google.com集成。”

Sally Hubbard, an expert on antitrust and technology companies with the Open Markets Institute, said Google’s decisions in search have huge implications. “Imagine you go to the library, and the card catalog is picking and choosing what book to get based on what makes the library the most money.”

开放市场研究所反托拉斯和技术公司专家萨利·哈伯德(Sally Hubbard)表示，谷歌的搜索决定具有重大影响。 “想象一下您去了图书馆，而卡片目录正在根据使图书馆赚钱最多的原因来挑选要选择的书。”

Google makes five times as much revenue through advertising on its own properties as it does selling ad space on third-party websites.

Google在自己的网站上投放广告的收入是在第三方网站上销售广告空间的收入的五倍。

In a written statement, Google spokesperson Lara Levin took issue with The Markup counting “answers,” related queries, and similar results as “Google” in our analysis.

在一份书面声明中，Google发言人拉拉·莱文(Lara Levin)质疑The Markup在我们的分析中计算了“答案”，相关查询以及与“ Google”相似的结果。

“Providing feedback links, helping people reformulate queries or explore topics, and presenting quick facts is not designed to preference Google. These features are fundamentally in the interest of users, which we validate through a rigorous testing process,” she said. “Sometimes, the most helpful information will be a link to another website — other times, it will be a map, a restaurant listing, a video or an image.”

“提供反馈链接，帮助人们重新构造查询或探索主题以及提供快速的事实并不是为了偏爱Google而设计的。这些功能从根本上满足了用户的利益，我们通过严格的测试过程对其进行了验证，”她说。 “有时，最有用的信息是指向另一个网站的链接-有时，它将是地图，餐厅清单，视频或图像。”

Levin called The Markup’s methodology “flawed and misleading.” She criticized it for being “based on a non-representative sample of searches” and said using Google Trends makes it more likely that results would include Google “knowledge panels” than a random sample would. However, Google has not publicly released a random sample of searches for research.

莱文称Markup的方法论 “有缺陷并且具有误导性”。她批评它“基于非代表性的搜索样本”，并说使用Google趋势使搜索结果包含Google“知识面板”的可能性比随机抽样的可能性更大。但是，Google尚未公开发布随机搜索样本以进行研究。

In response to Page’s 2004 quote about the company’s mission to get people “out of Google,” Levin said times have changed: “As a search engine, Google’s mission is to quickly direct searchers to great information, wherever that information is, as Page went on to explain. At that time, that generally meant to direct people from search results to websites. As search technologies have developed, that’s not always the best way to assist people.”

为了回应Page 2004年关于该公司将人们“带出Google的使命”的说法，莱文说，时代已经改变：“作为搜索引擎，Google的使命是在Page着手的地方，Swift将搜索者引导到重要信息。继续解释。当时，这通常意味着将人们从搜索结果引导到网站。随着搜索技术的发展，这并不总是帮助人们的最佳方法。”

She did not answer questions about whether those changes present the search engine with a conflict of interest.

她没有回答有关这些更改是否使搜索引擎产生利益冲突的问题。

Nearly nine in 10 U.S. web searches are performed on Google.

在美国，十分之九的网络搜索是在Google上进行的。

The effects of placing its own products on the search page can be stark: In the nine years since Google Flights and Google Hotels launched, those sites have become market leaders. They garnered almost twice as many U.S. site visits last year as each of their largest competitors, Expedia.com and Booking.com, even though we found Google Flights doesn’t always show users all the options.

在搜索页面上放置自己的产品的效果可能很明显：自Google Flights和Google Hotels推出以来的九年中，这些网站已成为市场领导者。尽管我们发现Google Flights并不总是向用户显示所有选择，但它们去年在美国的网站访问量几乎是其最大竞争对手Expedia.com和Booking.com的两倍。

“Google makes the most money when, long term, they can addict searchers to their platform,” said Rand Fishkin, a search engine analyst and frequent Google critic who found that 12 percent of real-world clicks on the search results page go to Google properties. “If Google can train you, don’t go to Genius.com, don’t go to TripAdvisor, don’t go to the restaurant’s website, just come to Google — always come to Google — then they win.”

搜索引擎分析师，经常批评Google的Rand Fishkin说：“从长远来看，当他们能够使搜索者沉迷于其平台时，Google赚钱最多。”他发现，搜索结果页面上实际点击的12％归Google所有属性。 “如果Google可以培训您，不要去Genius.com，不要去TripAdvisor，不要去餐厅的网站，只要来Google –总是来Google –他们就赢了。”

Levin said some regulators have defended the company’s practices, pointing to the Federal Trade Commission’s 2013 ruling that highlighting its products on search “could be plausibly justified as innovations that improved Google’s product”; and a U.K. High Court finding in 2016 that returning Google Maps for location queries was not an abuse of market dominance.

莱文表示，一些监管机构为公司的做法辩护，指出联邦贸易委员会(Federal Trade Commission)在2013年的裁决中强调，在搜索结果中突出其产品“可能会被视为改进Google产品的创新”。以及英国高等法院2016年的一项调查结果，即返回Google Maps进行位置查询并不滥用市场支配地位。

Although the FTC decided not to take legal action, as Google notes, it did require the company to change some practices. Google agreed to allow websites to opt out of having their content scraped for Google Flights, Google Hotels, and local business listings.

正如Google所说，尽管FTC决定不采取法律行动，但确实要求该公司改变某些做法。 Google 同意允许网站选择不对Google Flights，Google Hotels和本地公司列表的内容进行抓取。

And at least some FTC staffers had concluded that Google’s boosting its own properties in search rankings “led to a significant decrease in traffic for the websites of many vertical competitors,” according to an internal FTC report, half of which was accidentally provided to The Wall Street Journal. At the time, Google responded, “Speculation about consumer or competitor harm turned out to be entirely wrong.”

FTC的一份内部报告显示，至少有一些FTC职员得出结论，谷歌提升自己在搜索排名中的属性“导致许多垂直竞争对手的网站的访问量显着减少”，其中一半是意外提供给The Wall的。街头杂志。当时，谷歌回应说：“有关消费者或竞争对手损害的猜测完全是错误的。”

Levin said the company “continues to engage” with regulators conducting myriad active probes of Google’s parent company, Alphabet. Fifty U.S. attorneys general are currently investigating its ads and search business for potential antitrust violations. The Federal Trade Commission is examining past acquisitions by tech companies, including Google, for harm to competition. Politico reported that the Department of Justice will file an antitrust lawsuit against the company soon. The European Commission, which has already issued three multibillion-dollar fines against Alphabet for antitrust violations since 2017, launched a preliminary investigation into Google for Jobs in 2019.

莱文表示，该公司“继续与监管机构合作”，对谷歌的母公司Alphabet进行了无数次积极的调查。五十名美国司法部长目前正在调查其广告和搜索业务中是否存在潜在的反托拉斯违规行为。联邦贸易委员会正在审查包括Google在内的科技公司过去的收购对竞争的危害。 Politico 报道称，司法部将很快对该公司提起反托拉斯诉讼。欧盟委员会，它已经发出自2017年3数十亿美元的罚款对字母的违反反托拉斯法，展开了初步的调查在2019年到谷歌的招聘信息。

“Google helped build the free internet. And now they’re helping dismantle what they built,” said Chris Cummings, CEO of Curiosity Media, which owns the translation website SpanishDict.com.

“ Google帮助建立了免费的互联网。现在，他们正在帮助拆除其建筑。”拥有翻译网站SpanishDict.com的Curiosity Media首席执行官Chris Cummings说。

The site provides free translations and dictionary entries, many written by linguists and translators, he said. It is ad-supported and needs web traffic to survive. For years, he said, it grew as Google grew. But then Google began giving the top spot in searches to Google Translate, which is automated and asks users for corrections.

他说，该网站提供免费的翻译和字典条目，其中许多是由语言学家和翻译者撰写的。它具有广告支持，需要网络流量才能生存。他说，多年来，它随着Google的发展而增长。但是随后，谷歌开始将搜索的头把头放在谷歌翻译上，谷歌翻译是自动的，并要求用户进行更正。

“The big loss is for consumers,” he added, “because nobody thinks that Google Translate is the most accurate translator.”

他补充说：“最大的损失是给消费者，因为没人认为Google Translate是最准确的翻译器。”

He said data from the Google Search Console tool for websites shows SpanishDict gets as high as 80 percent or more of the clicks when it’s the top result but only 2 percent when Google Translate appears above it.

他说，来自网站的Google Search Console工具的数据显示，SpanishDict在获得最高搜索结果时获得的点击次数高达80％或更多，但当Google Translate出现在其上方时则只有2％。

“If we’re only getting 2 percent of the click-through, there’s no business to run here. We only exist because there are still some queries where they don’t put their stuff at the top,” he said. He said Google’s actions “have affected our ability to invest in the future.”

“如果我们仅获得2％的点击率，那么这里就没有生意可做。我们之所以存在，是因为仍然存在一些疑问，他们没有把自己的东西放在首位。”他说。他说，谷歌的行为“已经影响了我们未来的投资能力。”

Levin did not respond to questions about Google Translate or its effect on SpanishDict.

Levin没有回答有关Google Translate或其对SpanishDict的影响的问题。

SpanishDict.com showed up three times in our sample, each time below either Google Translate or Google’s dictionary.

SpanishDict.com在我们的示例中出现了3次，每次都在Google Translate或Google的词典下面。

下推页面 (Pushed Down the Page)

To determine the amount of space Google dedicates on the search page to direct answers and its own products, we built a custom scraper to gather all trending Google searches for two months, starting in November 2019. Then we built another scraper to run the searches as they would appear on mobile devices, where the majority of searches now occur. We wrote more than 1,000 lines of code to parse and analyze the resulting dataset, which contained more than 1 million rows.

为了确定Google在搜索页面上用于引导答案及其自身产品的空间量，我们构建了一个自定义抓取工具，以收集从2019年11月开始的两个月内所有Google趋势的搜索结果。然后我们构建了另一个抓取工具来运行搜索它们将出现在现在发生大部分搜索的移动设备上。我们编写了1000多行代码来解析和分析结果数据集，其中包含超过一百万行。

We found that the majority of links to and results for non-Google sites were pushed down to the bottom-middle of the page, where data shows users are less likely to click.

我们发现，指向非Google网站的大多数链接和搜索结果都被推到了页面的底部，那里的数据表明用户点击的可能性较小。

We categorized search results into four types: Google, non-Google, ads, and AMP, a web format created by Google four years ago. AMP pages are hosted by Google but created and monetized by publishers.

我们将搜索结果分为四类：Google，非Google，广告和AMP，这是Google四年前创建的一种网络格式。 AMP页面由Google托管，但由发布商创建并获利。

AMP has been controversial, with some publishers and developers saying it gives Google too much control over the web. The company tells website owners that using it makes them eligible “for more prominent presentation of thumbnail images in search results and in the Google Discover feed.” Because AMP has some features of a Google result and some features of a non-Google result, we gave it its own category.

AMP一直存在争议，一些发行商和开发人员称AMP赋予了Google对网络的过多控制权。该公司告诉网站所有者，使用它使他们有资格“在搜索结果和Google Discover Feed中更突出地显示缩略图”。由于AMP具有Google结果的某些功能和非Google结果的某些功能，因此我们为其指定了类别。

Levin objected to that decision, saying AMP results should be non-Google. “Those are outbound links to publishers and other web creators. To suggest otherwise is not factual,” she said. She also said our results may be heavy on AMP content because our sample, Google Trends, leans toward breaking news, which triggers “top stories” carousels. The news stories in those carousels were often delivered in AMP in our data.

莱文反对该决定，称AMP结果应该不是Google的产品。 “这些是指向发布者和其他Web创建者的出站链接。她说。她还说，由于我们的样本Google趋势倾向于突发新闻，因此触发了“热门新闻”轮播，因此我们的结果可能对AMP内容影响很大。这些轮播中的新闻故事通常在我们的数据中通过AMP传递。

Direct answers include “featured snippets,” which excerpt content from websites, and “knowledge panels,” which show summaries and facts drawn from the “knowledge graph,” Google’s fact database curated from other sources. They also include weather, sports statistics, and dictionary definitions. All of these appeared on the first search results page, typically at the top, without the need to click through.

直接答案包括“精选片段”(摘录自网站内容)和“知识面板”，其显示摘录自“知识图”(来自其他来源的Google事实数据库)的摘要和事实。它们还包括天气，体育统计数据和字典定义。所有这些都显示在第一个搜索结果页面上，通常在顶部，而无需单击。

Google acknowledged in written comments to Congress last fall that one major reason people end a search is because Google’s modules provided the answer on the search page.

谷歌去年秋天在国会的书面评论中承认，人们结束搜索的一个主要原因是因为谷歌的模块在搜索页面上提供了答案。

In our sample, Google featured its dictionary definitions before Urban Dictionary, Cambridge Dictionary, Dictionary.com, Wikipedia, Merriam Webster, and Investopedia, among others. And searches for song titles typically returned a YouTube video in the top spot, followed by the lyrics, displayed in full on the search results page.

在我们的示例中，Google在“城市词典”，“剑桥词典”，“ Dictionary.com”，Wikipedia，“ Merriam Webster”和“ Investopedia”等之前提供了其词典定义。搜索歌曲标题通常会返回首位的YouTube视频，然后是歌词，并在搜索结果页上完整显示。

Levin said Google does not give preference to YouTube, its subsidiary. Recent tests by The Wall Street Journal found that it did.

莱文说，谷歌没有优先考虑其子公司YouTube。《华尔街日报》最近的测试发现确实如此。

The quantity of Google results in some searches in our sample was quite large. A search for the Shania Twain song “Man! I Feel Like a Woman,” which was trending during our study, returned the following on the first page: links to four YouTube videos in various positions on the page; a box labeled “about” with some hyperlinked facts that led to new Google searches; a box labeled “people also search for,” which led to a new Google search; and a “people also ask” box. Together, direct answers and results leading to Google products took up 67 percent of the first search results page for that query. Non-Google results took up only 22 percent of the page.

在我们样本中的某些搜索中，Google搜索结果的数量很大。搜索Shania Twain的歌曲 “ Man！在我们的研究过程中流行的“我喜欢女人”，在首页上返回了以下内容：指向页面上各个位置的四个YouTube视频的链接；一个带有一些超链接事实的标有“关于”的框，从而导致了新的Google搜索；标有“人们也在搜索”的方框，这导致了Google的新搜索；和“人们也要问”框。导致Google产品的直接答案和结果加在一起占该查询第一个搜索结果页的67％。非Google搜索结果仅占页面的22％。

Even some of the “traditional” results that appeared after the Google results in that query were touched by its hand. Genius.com and Biography.com’s results were delivered in AMP.

即使在该查询的Google结果之后出现的某些“传统”结果也被其手触及了。 Genius.com和Biography.com的结果在AMP中提供。

与广告商竞争 (Competing with Advertisers)

Travel websites are among those who say they have suffered from Google Search’s preferential treatment of Google products. TripAdvisor, which laid off 200 workers in January, pointed to Google “siphoning off quality traffic that would otherwise find TripAdvisor” as its “most significant challenge.”

那些说自己遭受了Google搜索对Google产品的优惠待遇的旅行网站就是其中之一。 TripAdvisor在1月份解雇了200名员工，并指出Google“淘汰高质量的流量，否则将使TripAdvisor成为其最大挑战”。

In queries for specific airlines that appeared in our sample, Google presented Google Flights at the top of the results page, before links to the airlines’ own websites. A search for “nonstop flight” also returned Google Flights in the top spot, above competitors.

在查询样本中出现的特定航空公司时，Google在结果页面顶部显示了Google Flights，然后链接到航空公司自己的网站。搜索“不间断航班”的Google航班也排在首位，高于竞争对手。

And travel sites aren’t just Google’s competitors; they’re also its customers. Together, Expedia and Booking spent $5.8 billion on Google advertising in the 12 months ending in September 2019, according Skift, the travel research firm.

旅游网站不仅仅是Google的竞争对手；他们也是它的客户。根据旅游研究公司Skift的数据，在截至2019年9月的12个月中，Expedia和Booking共同在Google广告上花费了58亿美元。

“When they compete against their advertisers … I think it’s bad practice,” Barry Diller, chairman of Expedia Group, said during an earnings call in February in which he called Google an “existential” threat.

Expedia Group董事长巴里·迪勒(Barry Diller)在2月份的财报电话会议上说：“当他们与广告商竞争时……我认为这是不好的做法。”他称Google为“现有”威胁。

In the industry, Google Flights is not seen as the best product. It did not crack the top 10 of Frommer’s 2020 ranking of airfare search engines, for instance.

在业界，Google Flights不被视为最佳产品。例如，它没有跻身Frommer的机票搜索引擎2020年排名的前十名。

The Markup found that Google Flights did not always display the cheapest fares or all available flights, even when those fares and flights showed up in ITA Matrix, which is powered by the same software Google acquired in 2010 and used to launch Google Flights.

标记发现，即使ITA Matrix中显示了这些票价和航班，Google Flights也不总是显示最便宜的票价或所有可用航班，而ITA Matrix由Google在2010年购买并用于启动Google Flights的同一软件提供支持。

For example, a search on Google Flights for a one-way flight from Billings, Mont., to London’s Heathrow on Feb. 19 showed the cheapest flight was $1,068. The same search on Orbitz turned up a flight for $772, while ITA Matrix offered $766.69.

例如，在Google航班上搜索的2月19日从蒙大拿州比林斯到伦敦希思罗机场的单程航班，发现最便宜的航班是1,068美元。在Orbitz上进行的同一次搜索显示，机票价格为772美元，而ITA Matrix的价格为766.69美元。

And when The Markup searched for a one-way flight from Morgantown, W.Va., to New York City on Feb. 21, Orbitz produced a long list of results, including a three-hour-and-40-minute journey that combined flights from Southern Airways and American Airlines with a stop in Pittsburgh for $253.47. The same search on ITA Matrix showed the same flight at a different time for $242.40. But a Google Flights search showed nothing: “Aw snap, no results.”

当The Markup于2月21日搜寻从华盛顿州摩根敦到纽约市的单程航班时，Orbitz产生了很长的搜索结果列表，包括3小时40分钟的旅程从南方航空和美国航空在匹兹堡停留的航班，价格为253.47美元。在ITA Matrix上进行的相同搜索显示的是在不同时间的同一航班，价格为242.40美元。但是Google Flights搜索没有显示任何内容：“糟糕，没有结果。”

The FTC found the same thing in 2012, according to the memo accidentally disclosed to The Wall Street Journal: “Although it displays its flight search above any natural search results for flight-booking sites, Google does not provide the most flight options for travelers,” the regulators wrote.

根据《华尔街日报》不小心泄露的备忘录，美国联邦贸易委员会(FTC)在2012年发现了同样的事情：“尽管该航班的搜索结果显示在机票预订网站的自然搜索结果之上，但Google并未为旅行者提供最多的航班选择，监管机构写道。

Levin would not directly address that issue with The Markup. Google’s travel support webpage said that “a partnership with Google is required” to appear in Google Flights but gave no further details.

Levin不会直接通过The Markup解决该问题。谷歌的旅行支持网页说，“必须与谷歌建立合作关系”出现在谷歌航班上，但没有提供更多细节。

Once up-and-coming travel website Hipmunk blames its death in part on Google Search’s high ranking of Google’s travel products. A Silicon Valley favorite, Hipmunk was among the first to compare prices for Airbnb alongside hotels. It invented an “agony” ranking to help customers decide if that cheap flight was really worth it.

曾经崭露头角的旅游网站Hipmunk将其死亡归咎于Google搜索对Google旅游产品的高评价。 Hipmunk是硅谷的最爱，是率先将Airbnb和酒店价格进行比较的公司之一。它发明了“痛苦”排名，以帮助客户确定廉价航班是否真正值得。

To drum up traffic, it created webpages with highly specific travel tips like “How long does it take to get to the airport from downtown San Francisco?” This strategy led to booming “organic” traffic from Google, said its CEO at the time, Adam Goldstein. Then Google started to feature Google Flights, Google Hotels, and its “destinations on Google” travel guide prominently in search results.

为了增加流量，它创建了一些网页，这些网页包含非常具体的旅行提示，例如“从旧金山市区到机场需要多长时间？” 谷歌当时的首席执行官亚当·戈德斯坦(Adam Goldstein)表示，这一策略导致了来自Google的“有机”流量的蓬勃发展。然后Google开始在搜索结果中突出显示Google Flights，Google Hotels及其“ Google目的地 ”旅行指南。

“One quarter, that traffic started to really fall from what we were planning. And then the next quarter it fell short by even more,” Goldstein said. “This was around the time that I realized that the doors were starting to close in on us and all the small players in the travel industry.”

“四分之一的访问量开始真正低于我们的计划。接下来的一个季度，它甚至还差了很多。”戈德斯坦说。 “大约是在那个时候，我意识到门已经开始对我们和旅游行业中的所有小企业关闭。”

As Google Flights grew, airlines realized they didn’t need referrals from smaller players like Hipmunk, Goldstein said. The airlines lowered fees to nearly zero for small players, and airlines even began demanding that online travel agencies hide certain routes in exchange for access to fare data, according to Goldstein and complaints to the U.S. Department of Transportation. The department launched an inquiry but has not taken any action.

戈德斯坦说，随着Google Flights的发展，航空公司意识到他们不需要像Hipmunk这样的小公司的推荐。戈德斯坦和向美国运输部的投诉称，航空公司将小型航空公司的费用降低到几乎为零，甚至航空公司开始要求在线旅行社隐藏某些路线以换取票价数据。该部门发起了调查，但未采取任何行动。

Goldstein gave up and sold the company to the corporate travel giant Concur, which he thought had enough heft to compete. Concur shut Hipmunk down in January.

戈德斯坦放弃了该公司，并将其出售给了公司旅游巨头Concur，他认为后者有足够的实力来竞争。 Concur在一月份关闭了Hipmunk。

Levin, the Google spokesperson, declined to address Goldstein’s complaints.

Google发言人莱文(Levin)拒绝回答戈德斯坦(Goldstein)的投诉。

Page, Google’s co-founder, had bashed competitors like AOL and MSN in an interview with Playboy in 2004 for prominently placing their editorial content above competitors.

Google的联合创始人Page在2004年接受Playboy采访时曾挫败AOL和MSN等竞争对手，原因是其编辑内容突出地置于竞争对手之上。

“Most portals show their own content above content elsewhere on the web,” he said. “We feel that’s a conflict of interest, analogous to taking money for search results. Their search engine doesn’t necessarily provide the best results; it provides the portal’s results.”

他说：“大多数门户网站会在网络上其他地方的内容上方显示自己的内容。” “我们认为这是利益冲突，类似于为搜索结果付费。他们的搜索引擎不一定提供最佳结果。它提供了门户的结果。”

Long after leaving AOL and MSN in the dust, Google now says users want answers on the page — or, in their smart speakers, as officials said in a 2019 SEC filing, because it’s “quicker, easier and more natural to find what you’re looking for.”

在让AOL和MSN尘埃落定很久之后，Google现在表示用户希望在页面上找到答案，或者像官员们在2019年SEC文件中所说的那样，在他们的智能扬声器中找到答案，因为找到您的内容“更加快捷，轻松，自然，正在寻找。”

This philosophical switch started around 2007, when Google introduced what it called “universal search,” which incorporated Google Maps, Google Books, and Google Video into general search results, frequently at the top.

这种哲学上的转变始于2007年左右，当时Google 推出了所谓的“通用搜索”，该搜索将Google Maps，Google图书和Google Video合并到常规搜索结果中，经常出现在顶部。

At a conference in Seattle in 2007, Marissa Mayer, then Google’s vice president of search products and user experience, was asked about the sudden appearance of links to Google Finance ahead of Yahoo Finance in the design of the stock ticker info boxes on the search results page at that time. She responded, “It seems only fair, right? We do all the work for the search page and all these other things, so we do put it first.”

在2007年西雅图的一次会议上，当时的Google搜索产品和用户体验副总裁Marissa Mayer被问到在搜索结果上的股票行情自动收录器信息框设计中，在Yahoo Finance之前突然出现了指向Google Finance的链接的情况。当时的页面。她回答说：“这似乎很公平，对吧？我们会完成搜索页面的所有工作以及所有其他所有工作，因此我们将其放在首位。”

There are now many varieties of Google-created results featuring its products or information taken from other sites delivered as direct answers. Google even serves up results that lead nowhere and seem purely for entertainment, like a module that produces animal sounds.

现在，由Google创建的结果种类繁多，其产品或从其他网站获取的信息作为直接答案。 Google甚至提供的结果都无济于事，而且似乎纯粹是出于娱乐目的，例如产生动物声音的模块。

Other search engines, including DuckDuckGo and Bing, also provide answers on the search results page but attract less criticism because of their small U.S. market share. DuckDuckGo has 1.5 percent, and Bing has 7 percent, according to Statcounter.

其他搜索引擎(包括DuckDuckGo和Bing)也在搜索结果页面上提供了答案，但由于它们在美国的市场份额很小，因此受到的批评较少。 DuckDuckGo具有1.5％，和Bing有7％，根据Statcounter的。

“Fundamentally, consumers do want instant answers,” said Gabriel Weinberg, CEO of DuckDuckGo. “That is a tension with the open web and the sites that produce that information.”

DuckDuckGo的首席执行官加布里埃尔·温伯格(Gabriel Weinberg)说：“从根本上讲，消费者确实希望即时得到答案。” “这与开放网络和产生该信息的网站之间存在紧张关系。”

DuckDuckGo does not have any products to promote in its search results, but Bing, which mirrors Google’s features closely, directs users to Microsoft-owned products such as Bing Maps and its flight booking tool. Microsoft declined to comment.

DuckDuckGo的搜索结果中没有任何要推广的产品，但是与Google的功能密切相关的必应(Bing)将用户引导至Microsoft拥有的产品，例如必应地图及其航班预订工具。微软拒绝置评。

“这不是Google上的摘要” (“It’s Not a Snippet on Google”)

Some of the information Google presents in direct answers is gathered from websites that agree to it, including the crowdsourced encyclopedia Wikipedia, which allows anyone to publish its content as long as it’s credited. Wikipedia said it has not seen a drop in donations as a result.

Google给出的直接答案中的某些信息是从同意它的网站上收集的，包括众包的百科全书Wikipedia，该百科全书允许任何人在获得认可的情况下发布其内容。维基百科表示，其结果并未导致捐款减少。

Dario Taraborelli, former head of research at Wikimedia Foundation, which operates Wikipedia, said he is concerned, however, about the effect on media literacy.

运营维基百科的维基媒体基金会前研究负责人达里奥·塔拉博雷利(Dario Taraborelli)说，他对媒体素养的影响感到担忧。

“It’s become really difficult to understand where information comes from. What is the provenance of what we’re learning?” he said. “It’s going to be become much harder for a new contributor to understand … that Wikipedia exists as a separate project, that it’s not a snippet on Google.”

“很难理解信息的来源。我们正在学习什么的起源？” 他说。 “对于新的贡献者而言，要理解Wikipedia将作为一个单独的项目而存在，而不是Google上的摘要，将会变得更加困难。”

A 2017 study found people were more than five times more likely to mistakenly attribute information to Google itself after reading it in a Google direct answer than when no direct answer appeared in results.

2017年的一项研究发现，在结果中没有直接答案的情况下，人们在以Google直接答案阅读后错误地将信息归因于Google本身的可能性要高出五倍以上。

Google also scrapes websites without explicit permission, a practice it has defended by arguing the “fair use” exemption to copyright laws and noting that websites can opt out of inclusion in featured snippets while remaining in the search index for other results.

Google还在未经明确许可的情况下抓取网站，这是它辩护的一种做法，它主张对版权法的“合理使用”豁免，并指出网站可以选择不包含在精选摘要中，同时保留在搜索索引中以获取其他结果。

Brian Warner, founder of the website CelebrityNetWorth, said he declined Google’s request to include his site’s information in the “knowledge graph,” but two years later Google started showing information taken from CelebrityNetWorth in “featured snippets” results.

网站CelebrityNetWorth的创始人布莱恩·沃纳(Brian Warner)表示，他拒绝了Google要求将其网站的信息包括在“知识图”中的请求，但是两年后，谷歌开始在“精选摘要”结果中显示从CelebrityNetWorth所获取的信息。

His traffic crumbled, and Warner said he had to lay off half of his 12-person staff.

他的交通崩溃了，华纳说他必须解雇一半的12人职员。

The song lyrics site Genius said its click-through rate from search results fell from 60 to 80 percent to 5 to 20 percent after Google started displaying lyrics on the search results page. The company also alleges that one of Google’s lyrics providers, LyricFind, had stolen Genius’s watermarked lyrics and they were showing up in direct answers.

歌曲歌词网站Genius表示，在Google开始在搜索结果页面上显示歌词之后，其搜索结果的点击率从60％降至80％，降至5％至20％。该公司还指称，谷歌的歌词提供商之一LyricFind 盗窃了 Genius的带水印的歌词，他们正在直接回答。

“The fact that Google often populates its lyrics boxes with lyrics misappropriated from our website makes Google’s behavior even more unfair,” Ben Gross, chief strategy officer at Genius, said in an email.

Genius首席战略官本·格罗斯(Ben Gross)在一封电子邮件中说：“谷歌经常用从我们网站上盗用的歌词填充其歌词框，这一事实使谷歌的行为更加不公平。”

Genius sued Google in December. Google filed a demand for a jury trial. Levin declined to comment on the company’s claims or its lawsuit.

天才在12月起诉 Google。 Google要求进行陪审团审判。莱文拒绝评论该公司的主张或诉讼。

Some websites try to get into featured snippets because it’s high up on the page. Levin said “it can drive meaningful traffic to their sites” but declined to provide specifics.

一些网站试图进入特色片段，因为它在页面上排名很高。莱文说：“它可以为他们的网站带来有意义的流量”，但拒绝提供具体细节。

Some sites take whatever traffic Google search provides and don’t complain. “My goal in life is not to cross the Google gods,” said one sports media executive who did not want to be quoted by name or the name of the website for fear of being shut out by Google.

某些网站会接受Google搜索提供的流量，而不会抱怨。一位体育媒体高管说：“我的人生目标不是跨越Google的众神。”他不愿以名字或网站名称被引述，因为担心被Google拒之门外。

Cummings, of SpanishDict.com, said something similar. “Google delivers the traffic for the whole internet. Unless your name is Facebook, you rely on Google,” he said. “It’s very risky to speak out at Google because you don’t know what type of retaliation you’ll face.”

SpanishDict.com的Cummings说了类似的话。 “ Google提供了整个互联网的流量。除非您的名字叫Facebook，否则您将依靠Google。”他说。 “在Google面前大声疾呼是非常危险的，因为您不知道将要面对哪种报复。”

Frederic Lambert said his site was demoted in search listings when Google rebooted its shopping product in 2012.

弗雷德里克·兰伯特(Frederic Lambert)说，2012年Google重新启动其购物产品时，他的网站在搜索列表中被降级。

A penny-pinching roadside ad salesman, Lambert launched Acheter-moins-cher — “buy cheaper” — in 1998 to aggregate products from around the web and rank them by price. It allowed consumers to set alerts if the price dropped. When users clicked or bought something, sellers paid him a commission.

精打细算的路边广告销售员，兰伯特(Lambert)于1998年推出了“便宜”的Acheter-moins-cher，以汇总网络上的产品并按价格对它们进行排名。如果价格下降，它允许消费者设置警报。用户点击或购买商品时，卖家向他支付了佣金。

At its peak, about 40,000 shoppers visited the French site, and it took in more than a million euros a year in revenue. Starting in 2012, revenues decreased by half, until he shut it down in 2018.

在鼎盛时期，大约有40,000名购物者访问了该法国网站，每年收入超过100万欧元。从2012年开始，收入下降了一半，直到他在2018年将其关闭。

“They did kill us,” he said. “But not by making the best product.”

他说：“他们确实杀了我们。” “但是不能制造出最好的产品。”

In 2017, the European Commission levied a then-record-breaking €2.42 billion fine against Google, finding it gave preferential treatment to Google Shopping while demoting comparison shopping sites in the rankings. Google said it disagrees with the commission’s decision, which it has appealed.

2017年，欧盟委员会对谷歌处以创纪录的24.2亿欧元罚款，裁定它给予谷歌购物优惠待遇，同时将排名中的比较购物网站降级。谷歌表示不同意该委员会的决定，对此上诉已提出上诉。

Still, it agreed to allow comparison-shopping sites to buy ad slots in Google Shopping, a remedy the commission approved. Levin, the Google spokesperson, said 600 sites are participating, and their “click and impression” share grew from 20 to 40 percent between 2018 and 2019.

尽管如此，它仍同意允许比较购物网站在Google购物中购买广告位，这是委员会批准的一种补救措施。谷歌发言人莱文说，有600个网站参与其中，其“点击和印象”份额在2018年至2019年期间从20％增长到40％。

Last year, 41 comparison shopping companies sent a letter to the commission saying that they “have not experienced any substantial overall increase in traffic to their websites.”

去年，有41家比较购物公司致信欧盟委员会，说“他们的网站访问量总体上没有大幅增长。”

Google continues to abuse its market power, they said, and the industry has not rebounded, despite the remedy.

他们说，谷歌继续滥用其市场支配力，尽管采取了补救措施，该行业仍未反弹。

“Many competitors died,” said Thomas Höppner, a partner at the law firm Hausfeld Rechtsanwälte, who represented three Google Shopping competitors in the European Commission case. “And some argue that the industry will never fully recover.”

HausfeldRechtsanwälte律师事务所的合伙人托马斯·霍普纳(ThomasHöppner)说：“许多竞争者死亡。”霍夫纳代表欧洲委员会一案的三名Google购物竞争者。 “有些人认为该行业将永远无法完全恢复。”

This was originally published on themarkup.org and is republished under an Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives Creative Commons license.

该版本最初发布在 themarkup.org上， 并根据 Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives创用CC许可 重新发布 。