En France, Google écrase totalement la concurrence avec + de 90% de parts de marché depuis très longtemps, à tel point qu’on ne parle plus des concurrents (Bing, Yahoo, Orange/LeMoteur). C’est dommage car on a besoin de diversité, et qu’on a quelques tentatives d’autres moteurs. Par exemple Qwant (dont je n’arrive pas à trouver la moindre information fiable sur ses parts de marché en France).

We predicted that the opinions and voting preferences of 2 or 3 per cent of the people in the two bias groups – the groups in which people were seeing rankings favouring one candidate – would shift toward that candidate. What we actually found was astonishing. The proportion of people favouring the search engine’s top-ranked candidate increased by 48.4 per cent, and all five of our measures shifted toward that candidate. What’s more, 75 per cent of the people in the bias groups seemed to have been completely unaware that they were viewing biased search rankings. In the control group, opinions did not shift significantly.

Google will comply with Europe’s demands to change the way it runs its shopping search service, a rare instance of the internet giant bowing to regulatory pressure to avoid more fines.

DID you know that Google has been recording you without your knowledge?

A program hailed as an advertising breakthrough leads to a privacy complaint before a federal agency.

Take the company’s decision this week to stop personalizing Gmail ads based on its scanning of words in email messages. It may sound like substantial change, but it’s really mostly a smokescreen. First, it’s important to note that it came about after businesses voiced concern that Google would sweep up sensitive information from their correspondences—not because of consumer outcry.

Second, ads will remain, but “in line with how we personalize ads for other Google products.” That’s a cover-up for saying that heavy-duty data gathering will continue on all the Google products you use that are not Gmail. Google Analytics, for example, is one of the ways Google follows virtually everyone everywhere. Google’s apps allow it to learn your phone number and physical location, and your searches help it to create sophisticated data profiles about you. This then helps marketers target you with specific advertisements.

The search giant is massive in size, and there is a good chance you tap into Googleverse in some way:

Global market penetration for Android is 61-81%.
Google has a 78.8% market share for online search.
The company generates $67.4 billion in annual ad revenue.
Google processes two trillion searches annually.
30-50 million websites use Google Analytics to for tracking.
There are 700,000 apps available in the Google Play store.
82% of videos watched online come from YouTube.
In total, Google has at least 79 products and services.

According to Google’s documentation, it uses these services to pull out information on the “things you do”, “things you create”, and the things that make you unique.

Au terme de sept ans d’enquête, l’Union européenne a condamné Google, mardi 27 juin, à une amende record de 2,42 milliards d’euros pour abus de position dominante.

Si la question de la fiscalité est vivement débattue sur la scène internationale, ces débats n’en freinent pas pour autant les pratiques d’optimisation fiscales des géants du Web, dont Google dont le niveau d’imposition hors des US n’a été que de 2,6% en 2012. Le moteur tente de se défendre...

Google renonce à lire les e-mails de ses utilisateurs pour afficher des publicités ciblées. Vendredi 23 juin, le géant du Web a annoncé qu’il allait abandonner, au cours des prochains mois, cette pratique très controversée. Cela ne signifie pas pour autant que les publicités vont disparaître de Gmail, son service de courriers électroniques. Mais simplement que leur ciblage s’effectuera grâce aux données personnelles récoltées sur d’autres services maison, comme son moteur de recherche et YouTube.

Pas d'établissement stable dans le pays

The Financial Times reports big internet companies are paying Adblock Plus "30% of additional revenues" they would make from ads being unblocked.

Google’s ad blocker, far from a benign offering, is another step toward dominating the internet itself.

The next great Google product offers a window into a company reshaping itself around images, AI, and even more of your data