Google is dead to me

[infinite monkey]

"Google is dead to me."

You shot Google? How ironic!

[Stormieweather]

I don't like it.

When I use a search engine to find a vendor to sell me something, I expect all legal such vendors to be listed. I do not appreciate the search engine censoring what I can shop for. Google isn't selling the guns (or whatever), they are only listing the sellers.

So, if Google decided that we shouldn't be reading about vampires, because it's unChristianlike, and they blocked all books relating to vampires from their "shopping list", would that be ok?

It is NOT the same as Amazon, who actually sells the products and warranties them, and to whom you return the product, even though they don't manufacture the item. So Amazon DOES have the right to decide what to include in their wares.

Google should be like the operator, 411, or the phone book used to be. Just list the vendors and let me decide what to buy and from whom.

[BigV]

Originally Posted by Stormieweather

I don't like it.

When I use a search engine to find a vendor to sell me something, I expect all legal such vendors to be listed. I do not appreciate the search engine censoring what I can shop for. Google isn't selling the guns (or whatever), they are only listing the sellers.

So, if Google decided that we shouldn't be reading about vampires, because it's unChristianlike, and they blocked all books relating to vampires from their "shopping list", would that be ok?

It is NOT the same as Amazon, who actually sells the products and warranties them, and to whom you return the product, even though they don't manufacture the item. So Amazon DOES have the right to decide what to include in their wares.

Google should be like the operator, 411, or the phone book used to be. Just list the vendors and let me decide what to buy and from whom.

turns out google search is just like you expect. you search for vampires or ammunition or vehicles, all relevant results will be returned, including ones for vendors of such items. what won't be returned are shopping results for such items.


Ibby's mall analogy is a good one. google's changing the way results are displayed and the change is to make it more like a shopping mall and less like a search engine. they're only going to list some vendors' items/lines for appearance in the shopping results--the ones that show up with a for sale price. this is no different than any other store that doesn't carry everything on the planet.

Here's a list of the unacceptable product categories, from here:

Unacceptable product categories
Affiliates, cataloged drop-shipping programs, and multi-level marketing

The promotion of affiliate or pay-per-click links, products sold through a commission-based relationship, or sites that bulk list products fulfilled through drop-ship consolidators is not allowed. This includes item pages that are made up almost entirely of advertisements, or pages where advertisements obstruct the view of the submitted product. The promotion of multi-level marketing (MLM) business products is also not permitted, such as businesses that recruit members and offer them rewards for recruiting others and/or selling services
Services

Services are not allowed on Google Shopping.
Examples of listings disallowed:

Event tickets
Subscriptions, such as magazine subscriptions or any kind of service subscription.
Online courses

Other prohibited categories

The following products are not allowed on Google Shopping:

Vehicles
Guns, ammunition and knives
Tobacco and cigarettes
Traffic devices (Learn more)
Products related to casino and gambling
Products or digital goods that require additional software installation in order to be purchased.
Products bundled with service plans. (Note: The only products that are allowed to be submitted with a service plan are mobile devices.)

so. they won't be displaying hits for cars for sale. or cigarettes. or concert tickets. among a few other things. Naturally, you can still search for vendors of these items, but you can't get a priced listing for an item from google shopping. While I'm at it, Google Shopping is undergoing a considerable change. It used to be that when you did a search for an item, ammo or blenders or cameras or whatever, you got some paid hits for vendors and some hits for the actual items. Now, the only vendors or items you'll see hits for are for those vendors who have paid to be included in shopping results. That's right, you won't see any shopping results for your desired item unless a vendor has already paid google to be included in the shopping results.

this is not the same as google search where there are hits for vendors who haven't paid to be included. Vendors have to pay google to have their products listed in shopping results, not in search results.