How connected are Google and Netflix?

Factual Questions
1

I just encountered something I found suspicious. I wanted suggestions for new series I might want to watch so I went to Google and entered “best series to watch” as the search term. Here are all the results on the first page, in order:

Best Netflix Series and Show to Watch Right Now
Top TV Series - Best TV Shows of 2020 and All Time
Best Netflix Shows and Original Series to Watch in September
The 50 Best TV Shows on Netflix Right Now
Best Netflix series to watch now (September 2020)
65 of the best Netflix series to binge watch right now
Best Netflix shows: 30 TV series you need to binge watch
23 Best TV Shows of 2020 (So Far)
The 50 Best Shows on Netflix Right Now (September 2020)

There are a number of different streaming, cable, and broadcast companies. But these results seem to be very focused on just one.

With my suspicions aroused, I checked and confirmed that Google is now pushing a service that lets people watch Netflix via Google.

So does Google have a financial incentive to steer people towards watching Netflix? And is it biasing its search results based on that?

2

It may just be that Netflix is better at (or spends more money on) search engine optimization than other networks.

3

I can accept that they’re spending more money than Quibi or Shudder. But they’re spending more money than Disney?

4

Or just spending it smarter. I’d be really surprised if Netflix wasn’t a more tech-savvy company than Disney.

5

And now that I think about it this year has been an unexpected boon for Netflix and a total bust for Disney (who just laid off 20,000 today). SEO budgets are often the first to get slashed in tough times.

6

You may also have a greater diversity of material on Netflix than on Disney, so some of the Google searching will be aimed at finding things beyond the prompts that Netflix provides you with. My personal best effort was Saw 3 or something equally gross ‘Because you watched The Crown’.

7

I did the search, too. That appears to be an older article that gets updated. So it may just be because Netflix was one of the first streaming platforms and thus has more views on pages about it.

It could also be that people are more likely to Google for Netflix shows, while pretty much everyone can tell what’s on Disney+.

8

I’m not aware of any significant ties between Netflix and Google but Google has an incentive to push people to consume anything that pays them advertising revenue. Google takes something like 70% of the internet advertising revenue and essentially any company in the world is paying Google something for online advertising. So yes, Google probably has an incentive to promote Netflix, and Google+, and Hulu, ad infinitum. Whether they have a greater incentive to promote Netflix over Disney+, I can’t say.

Globally, Netflix has four times the subscribers of Disney+. If people are googling “shows to watch,” they are roughly four times as likely to be interested in articles discussing what Netflix offers than Disney+. Google sees that people click on the Netflix articles four times as often, give or take, and prioritizes them over articles about Disney+. This probably works for the majority of Google users.

9

Those sites aren’t from Netflix. They’re various sites that are trying to get ad revenue. Netflix has three times the user count as Disney+, so it makes since to pump out as many “What to watch on Netflix” articles as possible to get clicks.

10

Just watched. “Connected” on Netflix. The episode about Benfords law.

Came downstairs and typed “benf” . First suggested hit… benfords law

11

I have never watched that show but when I type “benf” I get “Benford’s law” as well. There aren’t very many (any?) words or names in English that start with “benf”.

My second suggestion is “Benfica” - what is yours?

12

My first hit is some site from India in Hindi.

13

Try a different search engine and/or a different browser. I’d suggest Duck Duck Go for the search engine because I know for a stone fact it will very often return wildly different results from Google. And Chrome is a Google product so might be more likely to steer you toward Google’s preferences than Firefox or Brave (which is chromium based but is a non-tracking browser.)

14

I’m hesitant to use any site like Duck Duck Go which starts out be requiring me to download their software in to my computer.

I don’t use Bing because Microsoft products are generally poorly made.

Gibiru, One Search, Search Encrypt, Start Page, and Swisscows all make a big point that they are alternatives to Google that protect my privacy. Which is not the issue I have with Google.

Boardreader, CC Search, Ecosia, Ekoru, GiveWater, Slideshare, and Wiki.com are specialized and don’t work as general search engines.

I feel that foreign search engines like Baidu, Exalead, Ixquick, Mojeek, Naver, Qwant, Seznam Sogou, Soso, Yandex, and Youdao would be biased towards their home locations.

Gigablast seems to have no idea what it’s doing.

Lycos is more ad-driven than Google.

AOL Search, Alta Vista, Ask Jeeves, Dogpile, Excite, and Yahoo are all essentially dead.

The people at Yippy are probably crazy.

So I dunno. Metacrawler?

15

Duck Duck Go does not require a software installation. Just Google “Duck Duck Go” and navigate to the website like normal. I have Google set as the home page and default search engine, with DDG as the default search for the address bar search preference. DDG does not track you or install cookies (which Google definitely does) and it doesn’t curate your searches as Google does. To prove that one, pick any movie or tv show and try to Google then DDG “[movie/show] torrent” and see what Google doesn’t approve of.