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When corporations earn, Google profits

October 18, 2016

The American internet technology company charges firms for higher rankings on search engine result pages. Larger corporations profit from the increased visibility. Smaller companies do not and say it is unfair.

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DW Shift Google Ranking 1
Image: ZDF

Reinhard Spörer rents out a holiday cottage in northern Germany. He gets half of his bookings through Google. But when his listing began to sink in the rankings, so did the number of bookings. The Celexon Group, on the other hand, cooperates with Google and wins customers through web advertising. People searching for beamers see its product listings first. And Google earns on every click. The search engine juggernaut offers boot camps free of charge to start-ups to bind them to it early on.