Google's Jobs Search Draws Antitrust Complaints From Rivals (reuters.com) 23
Google's fast-growing tool for searching job listings has been a boon for employers and job boards starving for candidates, but several rival job-finding services contend anti-competitive behavior has fueled its rise and cost them users and profits. From a report: In a letter to be sent to European Union competition commissioner Margrethe Vestager on Tuesday and seen by Reuters, 23 job search websites in Europe called on her to temporarily order Google to stop playing unfairly while she investigates. Similar to worldwide leader Indeed and other search services familiar to job seekers, Google's tool links to postings aggregated from many employers. It lets candidates filter, save and get alerts about openings, though they must go elsewhere to apply.
Alphabet's Google places a large widget for the 2-year-old tool at the top of results for searches such as "call center jobs" in most of the world. Some rivals allege that positioning is illegal because Google is using its dominance to attract users to its specialized search offering without the traditional marketing investments they have to make. Other job technology firms say Google has restored industry innovation and competition.
Alphabet's Google places a large widget for the 2-year-old tool at the top of results for searches such as "call center jobs" in most of the world. Some rivals allege that positioning is illegal because Google is using its dominance to attract users to its specialized search offering without the traditional marketing investments they have to make. Other job technology firms say Google has restored industry innovation and competition.
Sour grapes (Score:3)
Re: Sour grapes (Score:1)
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Doesn't the behavior also have to harm the consumer before it's actionable?
That's what I thought. Maybe I'm way off base on this whole thing.
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I suppose it could be argued that by using its monopoly position in one area to entrench itself as the dominant player in other area is anti-competitive, and thus ultimately does harm consumers (in this case, businesses seeking employees). It's a bit of a stretch, but so all-consuming is Google's search these days, that's it is hard to see how it can't completely decimate any competitors who even use search technology even in a very niche area merely by building refined search portals. I doubt there's any k
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And thus, presto, you generate harm to the consumers by a mere wave of the hand. Sadly for you and for lawyers in the US, you need actual harm to consumers, not hand-wavey harm. Sadly for Google, in the EU you just need harm to competitors, preferably EU-based competitors.
Re:Sour grapes (Score:4, Insightful)
I've been looking at this jobs capability for the past few weeks and I've noticed something interesting.
Google is indexing all job sites and corporate career web sites. So what you'll often see in the listings it provides is the same job posting over and over but from different websites. In some cases the name of the company is left on the posting, in others the wording is nearly identical but the site the posting comes from has removed the company name and replaces it with words like "confidential client".
So what I wonder is how many of these complaining job sites were really hired by the company to post their openings and how many of them are themselves simply scraping company sites or other posting sites looking for postings, then presenting them through their own site where they can intercept the links to apply and claim they found the client?
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Often they use multiple agencies, all of whom post their own ads which are mostly copy/paste from the job spec so are all the same. The agencies always hide the company's name to stop candidates bypassing them and going directly to the source, which as well as denying them any revenue would also give the candidate an advantage by being significantly cheaper.
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Often they use multiple agencies, all of whom post their own ads which are mostly copy/paste from the job spec so are all the same. The agencies always hide the company's name to stop candidates bypassing them and going directly to the source, which as well as denying them any revenue would also give the candidate an advantage by being significantly cheaper.
They funny part of that is if you Google the Kobe description you can often find the company anyway; in some cases they’ve posted the exact same job description. That lets you see if you know anyone there and reach out to them, avoiding the whole agency BS.
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Google is indexing all job sites and corporate career web sites. So what you'll often see in the listings it provides is the same job posting over and over but from different websites.>/quote>
If you want reasonable search results for jobs, use a site like Indeed, not Google. Job-specific sites are way ahead of Google in terms of search quality. (Fraudulent job ads are very common, and Google hasn't figure out how to cull them well, heck, they can't even sort out dupes.)
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I tried Indeed and Zip and found both of them to be very wanting. If you create an account and provide your profile then you get contacted based on simple keyword searches.
I've been in IT management for 20 years, provided my profile showing as such and mentioned that I've managed SalesForce development teams. My profile makes it clear that I'm interested in only full-time additional leadership roles.
And what I got from Indeed were people asking me to consider contract positions as a SalesForce developer
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Above you are conflating "searching for a job" with "job searching for you".
Regardless of platform, recruiters are dumber than a sack of doorknobs. If your resume contains the word "Salesforce", even if the context is "I'll never do Salesforce, don't contact me", you'll get plenty of brain-dead recruiters pinging you for Salesforce dev jobs.
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Google is indexing all job sites and corporate career web sites. So what you'll often see in the listings it provides is the same job posting over and over but from different websites. In some cases the name of the company is left on the posting, in others the wording is nearly identical but the site the posting comes from has removed the company name and replaces it with words like "confidential client".
So what I wonder is how many of these complaining job sites were really hired by the company to post their openings and how many of them are themselves simply scraping company sites or other posting sites looking for postings, then presenting them through their own site where they can intercept the links to apply and claim they found the client?
It's a common scam, some recruiters are putting themselves into the middle of the process and remove the company name to keep you from going directly to the employer. In the worst case, I had 5 different agencies all call me about the same freaking job. I called them out on it because I could tell from the description that it was the same place.
The worst part of all of this is that if you have more than one recruiter apply on your behalf, you get blacklisted.
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I hate Google's business practices as much as the next person, and maybe I'm missing something, but this just sounds like sour grapes to me. What's illegal about this practice
Google has an effective monopoly on search. Using that to prop up a new business is illegal. However, I'm not sure this applies for job searches in particular - Indeed is the dominant place job searches happen. Still, it's not a baseless idea.
Re:Sour grapes (Score:4, Interesting)
nwaack started this thread by inquiring:
I hate Google's business practices as much as the next person, and maybe I'm missing something, but this just sounds like sour grapes to me. What's illegal about this practice
Eventually prompting lgw to respond:
Google has an effective monopoly on search. Using that to prop up a new business is illegal. However, I'm not sure this applies for job searches in particular - Indeed is the dominant place job searches happen. Still, it's not a baseless idea.
The fact that the plaintiffs have appealed to the EU's "competition" czar, Margrethe Vestager, practically guarantees another EU-specific set of fines and restrictions on Google. Vestager has had a serious hard-on for the big G [theverge.com] and its corporate overlord Alphabet since the European Parliament confirmed her as the Competition Commissioner in 2014. She talked the Commission into levying a 2.7 giga-euro fine on Alphabet for "anti-competitive behavior" in 2017 (which Google's corporate parent is, quite understandably, currently appealing), and a year ago she talked the Commission into fining Google 1.4 billion euros for "abusive online advertising practices." Four months later, she got them to approve levying another 3.4-billion-euro-penalty against Alphabet, for leveraging the monopoly in search she had previously persuaded the Commission existed to establish and promote its dominance in other businesses (particularly in the nexus of marketing its personally-targeted online advertising products and Android's deep ties to the data-harvesting operations that feed into that capability). Those fines doubtlessly will also be appealed to the EU's General Court, but Vestager has made it crystal clear that she's gunning for Google, so, until she leaves office (which won't be anytime soon), her crosshairs are firmly centered on Alphabet.
It's important to keep in mind here that the EU's High Court overturned a 1.3 giga-euro fine the Commission had levied against Intel for behavior Vestager had persuaded it was monopolistic, and sent it back to the General Court for Intel's appeal to be re-heard. That's likely to establish a precedent that will favor Alphabet, when its appeals are heard. (Getting on the General Court's docket is likely to be a multi-year process. Getting a ruling will take still longer. Assuming Goophabet appeals any adverse ruling - and I think that's a pretty safe assumption, given the immense amounts of money it has at stake - it's not inconceivable that the last dog officially dies for the myriad-a-pus on actually having to pay the fines until 2030 or thereabouts. Assuming the courts all rule against Alphabet, of course. Because, again, they just may not.)
As for how and where Google's job listings are displayed - and this is the heart of the complaint Vestager is being asked to consider - I can't speak for the EU's legal system (which is where the question of whether Alphabet is or is not a monopolist will ultimately be decided), but if the Goog is charging neither the companies who list their openings, nor the applicants who find those openings via the listings it displays, the charge of monopolism is ludicrous on its face. Google is treating job listings as simply a more focused iteration of its existing search offering - and the fact that that obsoletes third-party recruiters' business model is tough toenails for them.
Remember when physical travel agencies were a thing? How about newspaper classified ad sections? Or per-minute charges for domestic long-distance calls?
Newer business models obsoleted them all - and let's please just don't even get started on video rental stores ...