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Google's conflict of interest with Uber

8 points by surferbayarea ↗ HN
http://google-latlong.blogspot.com/2014/11/google-maps-your-best-accessory-this.html

Given Google Ventures is an investor in Uber, this is a clear conflict of interest.

Google is supposed to be an unbiased search engine. So in this case, Google maps should either return fares from a number of top services(uber, lyft, taxi) or return the cheapest(which is what a user might want).

Just returning results from one service is a clear violation of user trust. As a user, I can no longer trust Google to give unbiased information based on algorithmic ranking. Seems Google ranking is now influenced clearly by its monetary interest as a corporation. That is fair(since a corporation's goal is to make money), but then all the bullshit about doing no evil goes down the drain. That also makes sense, since they have officially given up on that manifesto.

3 comments

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spindritf
As a user, I completely don't care. If Google's results are not on par with some other, better service, I'll simply use it instead.

What does it even mean for a maps app to be "unbiased"? How is it "evil" to partner up with another company? Google's supposed to be useful.

Whether they should return worse results than possible due to incompetence, cost cutting, conflict of interest, poor management... really doesn't matter. Only results matter.

applel0ver
If the fastest way to go from point A to point B is via lyft or sidecar, only providing uber as an option might not return the most optimal(and hence useful) result. Just like for some stocks, google web ranking returns Yahoo Finance as the first result(since that is what the ranking algorithms come up with), for maps as well they should determine the most optimal way for a user to go from one point to another - regardless of whether that service is owned by Google or a rival.
spindritf
If the fastest route to go from A to B is different than whatever Google says it is, then there's room for a better service. It doesn't matter whether it's a result of Google favouring Uber, or just not doing a very good job. The internal cause is completely irrelevant to the user.