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Ask HN: Is Google a Monopoly or just really good at building useful products?

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Re: Ask HN: Is Google a Monopoly or just really good at building useful products?

#31

Post by pgeorgi »

Dahoon wrote: post #26
pgeorgi wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No one can release anything Google disagrees with on Google Play Recent Android versions made it ever easier to install apps without using the Play Store: I have F-Droid installed and whitelisted (so no warnings every time an apk appears), which required toggling a permission switch the system pointed out to me. As for Chrome, apparently various vendors ship their own browser as default although it seems they still…

>Recent Android versions made it ever easier to install apps without using the Play Store Yes I'm using it myself but how is that making Google Play less of a monopoly? F-droid can't sell apps on the play store without using Google.

> F-droid can't sell apps on the play store without using Google

"I can't sell my organic bananas at Walmart without dealing with Walmart"?

I can understand ideas that there shouldn't be a "default store" on devices. Or that Android's certification (whatever that is called) shouldn't require pre-installing the play store as only option. I may or may not agree with them.

But "I should be able to sell my wares at a store without dealing with its owner/operator" sounds strange to me.

Re: Ask HN: Is Google a Monopoly or just really good at building useful products?

#32

Post by solarkraft »

prithvi24 wrote: post #12

Google is pretty monopolistic. They have shown anti-competitive behavior with local, maps, etc. Would create a more competitive marketplace if Google has broken up into separate publicly traded entities (ie like Waymo)

It would be great - and I think the move to Alphabet was a preparation for that.

Re: Ask HN: Is Google a Monopoly or just really good at building useful products?

#33

Post by TallGuyShort »

wai1234 wrote: post #20
krm01 wrote: post #13

They have their share of failed products (see https://www.computerworlduk.com/galleries/it-vendors/google-... ) Their position allows them to distribute their products to a larger audience, quicker than others for sure, but I don’t believe that’s a formula for success per se. Successful products like Gmail, grew like a scrappy startup working on a great product would grow. The first version Paul made was just a searc…

You write about Gmail as if no one had email before that. GMail doesn't have a single meaningful feature that other clients didn't have before. And those clients didn't completely redo the UI every 3 months whether you want it or not.

The storage limits gmail offered for free was unprecedented, and in my experience they were suddenly far more reliable than their competition. I find it's ability to pick events out of natural language emails and add them to your calendar, remind you if you forgot to attach something but it sounds like you meant to, etc. very useful, and I never saw those before despite continuing to be a regular user of Yahoo and Hotmail.

Re: Ask HN: Is Google a Monopoly or just really good at building useful products?

#35

Post by TallGuyShort »

wai1234 wrote: post #18

Why do you believe Google is "really good at building useful products"? Would you buy any of them if they didn't have the Google brand (or pay for any of the free ones for that matter)?

I'm sure the Google brand has helped adoption, but I do actually pay for G Suite and it's pretty hard to beat if you're starting a business and want a pretty no-nonsense productivity suite everyone can work together on.

Re: Ask HN: Is Google a Monopoly or just really good at building useful products?

#36

Post by jasonvorhe »

Dahoon wrote: post #5

>Is Google a monopoly? Yes in more than one area. The lowest hanging fruit (which will cause downvotes): Google Play. No one can release anything Google disagrees with on Google Play.... but google could. Google and Apple really should be separated from their stores. They know everything that happens on them and no one can compete against that. Bundling Chrome with Android (and Apple apps in iOS) is no different than…

Except that the web is a completely different landscape than it was during the prime of IE6. If IE6 had been standards compliant like Chrome, no one would have bothered with Microsoft bundling it with Windows because you'd been able to switch browsers without every 2nd website telling you to use IE6.

Firefox and later Chrome continued to rise because they were faster, extendable and more open, not because Microsoft has to offer a browser selection in some markets.

Re: Ask HN: Is Google a Monopoly or just really good at building useful products?

#37

Post by 98codes »

thayne wrote: post #28

Regardless of whether they abuse their monopoly power or not, it is undeniable that Google is either a monopoly or member of an oligopoly in several areas, including: search, advertisement (adwords), email (gmail), cloud infrastructure (GCP), navigation (google maps), SaaS productivity suite (google docs), mobile operating systems (android), web browsers (chrome), etc. Google certainly isn't as bad at abusing its mon…

Out of everything in that list, I’d say GCP doesn’t belong. AWS is the beast in that space, with GCP running third at best.

Re: Ask HN: Is Google a Monopoly or just really good at building useful products?

#38

Post by nknealk »

This may be downvoted to oblivion, but here goes:

I think part of the problem with our current framing of what is "anti-competitive" or "monopolistic" focuses on consumers. A classical monopolist artificially limits supply and drives up prices to maximize profits (see, for example, the business practices of Standard Oil). That's completely orthogonal to Google's business model for two reasons:

1) For consumers, most products have no downward mobility in price from competition. The search is already free (ie. literally the lowest price possible). How can something be bad for consumers if it's free? Similar things can be said of gmail, maps, etc. 2) Google doesn't limit supply of its products within reasonable use (when's the last time you got a communication from Google demanding you do fewer searches?)

I think the question you should perhaps ask is "when we consider regulating behavior of large firms, is regulation that's good for consumers actually good for society?"

Re: Ask HN: Is Google a Monopoly or just really good at building useful products?

#39

Post by dazc »

wai1234 wrote: post #20
krm01 wrote: post #13

They have their share of failed products (see https://www.computerworlduk.com/galleries/it-vendors/google-... ) Their position allows them to distribute their products to a larger audience, quicker than others for sure, but I don’t believe that’s a formula for success per se. Successful products like Gmail, grew like a scrappy startup working on a great product would grow. The first version Paul made was just a searc…

You write about Gmail as if no one had email before that. GMail doesn't have a single meaningful feature that other clients didn't have before. And those clients didn't completely redo the UI every 3 months whether you want it or not.

Yet Gmail gained momentum really fast. I wonder why that was, the 'others' complete failure to filter spam perhaps?

Re: Ask HN: Is Google a Monopoly or just really good at building useful products?

#40

Post by thayne »

wai1234 wrote: post #20
krm01 wrote: post #13

They have their share of failed products (see https://www.computerworlduk.com/galleries/it-vendors/google-... ) Their position allows them to distribute their products to a larger audience, quicker than others for sure, but I don’t believe that’s a formula for success per se. Successful products like Gmail, grew like a scrappy startup working on a great product would grow. The first version Paul made was just a searc…

You write about Gmail as if no one had email before that. GMail doesn't have a single meaningful feature that other clients didn't have before. And those clients didn't completely redo the UI every 3 months whether you want it or not.

When it first came out, gmail was significantly better than the competition, for the following reasons:

1. _much_ better spam filtering

2. _much_ better searching

3. a _lot_ of storage (no need to delete old emails)

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