<story><title>The case for why Google should be regulated as a public utility</title><url>https://www.rankscience.com/blog/why-google-should-be-regulated-as-a-public-utility</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>ALittleLight</author><text>One Google quirk I&amp;#x27;ve been thinking about lately is the times when you search for something and the thing you want is the top advertised and organic result. Seems like a waste of money.&lt;p&gt;An example, if you search for &amp;quot;heroku&amp;quot; then you get an ad for heroku, which, yeah, is what I was searching for, but heroku is also the top result and obviously what I was looking for. Heroku is paying Google to provide Google with the search result that Google should&amp;#x27;ve (and does) already identified as the right result.&lt;p&gt;I assume the reason these ads exist is because if they didn&amp;#x27;t competitors would take them, but still, it feels like an odd arrangement very much to Google&amp;#x27;s benefit where companies pay Google up prevent competitors from taking their traffic.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>xnx</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s also the best way to get accurate data on how many searches for &amp;quot;heroku&amp;quot; there are. Without an ad running, you only get estimates.</text></comment>
<story><title>The case for why Google should be regulated as a public utility</title><url>https://www.rankscience.com/blog/why-google-should-be-regulated-as-a-public-utility</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>ALittleLight</author><text>One Google quirk I&amp;#x27;ve been thinking about lately is the times when you search for something and the thing you want is the top advertised and organic result. Seems like a waste of money.&lt;p&gt;An example, if you search for &amp;quot;heroku&amp;quot; then you get an ad for heroku, which, yeah, is what I was searching for, but heroku is also the top result and obviously what I was looking for. Heroku is paying Google to provide Google with the search result that Google should&amp;#x27;ve (and does) already identified as the right result.&lt;p&gt;I assume the reason these ads exist is because if they didn&amp;#x27;t competitors would take them, but still, it feels like an odd arrangement very much to Google&amp;#x27;s benefit where companies pay Google up prevent competitors from taking their traffic.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>xapata</author><text>I was told that these ads are very cheap, because Google scores the relevance very high.</text></comment>