I vehemently disagree.

There used to be plenty of ways to get in touch with the owner of a brand directly. Now they're all being camped by rent extractors.

Google is chief amongst those taxing businesses. They are not government anointed to perform this role. Google should not be allowed to do this.

As a business gets more successful, Google extracts more money from them. Simply trying to access the business will send revenue to Google.

Google took the standard URL bar and turned in into a rent extraction product. This should have been illegal, but our regulatory bodies have been asleep at the wheel.

Google adds costs to every business, every product, every entrepreneur. They should stick to servicing user inquiries, not stuffing ads in front of simple trademark lookup.

It's time to knock on their doors of regulatory bodies, both in the US and abroad. No more trademark camping from the "URL bar".

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terminalshort 17 hours ago | parent [-]

And every single one of those ways to get in touch still exists. Advertising is, and always has been, optional. But of course those companies that pay for it get more customers. So in practice, almost everyone pays for it. That's not rent extraction. Paying for advertising is paying for attention. And you are in absolutely no circumstance ever entitled to anyone's attention. The only difference with Google is that you even get to appear at all without paying. No other ad supported platform is like that. It's pay up or GTFO. Nobody hijacked your URL bar. You can type in the URL just like you always could.

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Dylan16807 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> And you are in absolutely no circumstance ever entitled to anyone's attention. The only difference with Google is that you even get to appear at all without paying. No other ad supported platform is like that.

If google wants to rebrand to an advertising platform instead of a search engine, I will accept that argument. And I mean truly, fully rebrand, making it clear to everyone that visits.

Until then, their rent extraction is a real problem. They're pretending to return information and putting ads in the way in a deliberately deceptive manner.

Companies wouldn't feel nearly as compelled to bid on their own name if that deception wasn't there.

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echelon 16 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

If I want to get in touch with a company, I go through Google. It's not the brand's choice, it's not my choice. The brand has to pay for that. I, ultimately, also have to pay for that.

This is NOT okay. Google is using monopoly power to do this. They have inserted themselves as parasitic middle men. No different than a cymothoa exigua eating away at the tongue.

This is not advertising. It's a road bump. It's getting throttled by the mafia. It's a protection racket on people's hard-earned brands. A tax on cognition and communication.

Google is a villain here. They are not offering value or service or anything useful. They're extracting.

They're the Harvey Weinstein of the internet here -- nobody wants to do business with the guy, but he's there and he's asking you to do what he wants. You can go along, and do the thing, or you can say no and completely lose your customer.

The customer that already knows you by name. You made it this far. Now there's this gross middle man asking you to give up.

So you let Harvey Weinstein slip his hands in. Cost of doing business.

That's what Google is in this story.

This isn't advertising. It's the R-word, being perpetrated because of a lack of the other R word: healthy market regulation.

90 percent of all humans on the planet are being fleeced by this. Every time you put something into the URL bar, Google gets a piece of the action.

What I'm saying is, when these are brand names, this is theft. Highway robbery. Monopolistic pillaging.

Google needs a slap down.

	▲	reilly3000 9 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Typing in URLs by hand is a choice you can make. Scrolling down to organic results (for brands you like) is another choice you can make. Paying for a search engine service is a great choice. Brands can ask you to add them to your contacts with their website in their vcard. They can prompt you to bookmark them. They could publish a feed for you. Sure Google can get us to routed in a way we’re all conditioned to depend on, but there are plenty of other ways to get to your destination. There must be 50 ways to leave…
	▲	terminalshort 15 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Yes it is your choice. You could have gone to the physical location, called them, sent a letter to their address, used Bing, Yahoo or whatever. Your argument is just not rational.