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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?

#71

Post by personjerry »

joeshmoe24 wrote: post #70
personjerry wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherman_Antitrust_Act_of_1890 "The Sherman Act broadly prohibits (1) anticompetitive agreements and (2) unilateral conduct that monopolizes or attempts to monopolize the relevant market." For example, squashing competition by deleting your competitors search results might be interpreted as an attempt to monopolize the market. In the context of providing a marketplace (i.e. the App Store)…

Yes it does: https://searchengineland.com/another-court-affirms-googles-f... The worst thing about antitrust threads on HN is idiots trying to appear knowledgeable by skimming a Wikipedia article.

That's an interesting case that I was not aware of.

I think your attitude is suboptimal here.

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

#72

Post by tomohawk »

One definition of a monopoly is the Sherman Antitrust Act - 75% or more market share.

Google has a monopoly in search (90% or more share) and they also control north of 60% of internet ad revenue, and they have a monopoly in browsers.

Google repeatedly has leveraged monopolies in one area to gain monopolies in other areas.

They also store tons of data on all of us, whether we want to use them or not. Since that data is not on devices we own, it is easy pickings for law enforcement to get ahold of as the traditional protections do not apply. If NSA or some government agency collected this data with so little oversight or protection, it would be outrageous. They wouldn't get away with saying "We promise not to be evil".

If Google cuts off service to you, good luck. You have little recourse.

Google enters markets, dominates them with a product, and then drops the product, destroying the market.

Google is also highly partisan, overwhelmingly backing a single political party. This is unhealthy to say the least.

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

#73

Post by c256 »

hedora wrote: post #47
dazc wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I think it was the extremely high storage quotas (for the time) and the fact that the UI was ajax’y and didn’t reload the whole page/frame when you clicked. Spam filtering on gmail has always been OK, but it was fine (for me) on other products for many years before gmail came out. I doubt it was much of a differentiator, but who knows? Maybe the #1 provider before gmail really sucked at it or something.

They were Yahoo and HotMail, and they both had significantly worse spam filtering than gmail. They also had relatively poor security, reflected in bugs that made it common for even relatively careful users to have their accounts hijacked (at least, that’s what I heard from users at the time; I didn’t really use either one much myself.)

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

#74

Post by mav3rick »

ardy42 wrote: post #24

> I know that Google is super powerful and has great products but what exactly are (if any) examples of Google showing anti-competitive behaviour? At least at one point, they nagged you incessantly to install Chrome when you used Google Search. I would attribute Chrome's current dominance [1] to that fact, and that fact alone. That's uncannily like the anti-competitive behavior Microsoft was judged to have used to pu…

That is such BS. Microsoft is making it increasingly harder to use a different browser on their OS. No mention of that. When they do it, "it's their OS, it's fair". Google is not forcing anyone to install this browser nor does it auto install when you navigate to Google search.

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

#75

Post by mav3rick »

quickthrower2 wrote: post #60
joeshmoe23 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't that what you're doing? Search ads isn't the only way to reach people and it's not an impediment for new entrants as shown by Amazon's ad business. As for the general matter, google has the right to publish and design their website however they see fit, it's a no brainer, the only reason this question keeps popping up is that google has very powerful enemies in basically all news and publishing companies (they…

Ok maybe monopoly isn’t the word, but what’s the word that describes how it is virtually impossible for anyone else to write a seriously competing search engine, given the resources, trade secrets and patents Google has. Also can you give me an example of a true monopoly as per your definition. Even the US government doesn’t have a tax monopoly because there are other countries you can live in.

You are literally disincentivizing anyone making any company. Every company will have it's secret sauce. You're blaming Google for being "so good " that "it's no fair".

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

#76

Post by ardy42 »

mav3rick wrote: post #74
ardy42 wrote: post #24

> I know that Google is super powerful and has great products but what exactly are (if any) examples of Google showing anti-competitive behaviour? At least at one point, they nagged you incessantly to install Chrome when you used Google Search. I would attribute Chrome's current dominance [1] to that fact, and that fact alone. That's uncannily like the anti-competitive behavior Microsoft was judged to have used to pu…

That is such BS. Microsoft is making it increasingly harder to use a different browser on their OS. No mention of that. When they do it, "it's their OS, it's fair". Google is not forcing anyone to install this browser nor does it auto install when you navigate to Google search.

> That is such BS. Microsoft is making it increasingly harder to use a different browser on their OS. No mention of that. When they do it, "it's their OS, it's fair".

What's with the attitude? I listed Microsoft as an example of anti-competitive behavior. How did you get from there to thinking I'd penned some kind of endorsement of Microsoft?

> Google is not forcing anyone to install this browser nor does it auto install when you navigate to Google search.

The problem is that they're using (or used) their dominance in one area as leverage to gain dominance in another area.

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

#77

Post by MatthaeusHarris »

chrisco255 wrote: post #49

There was that time they colluded with Apple not to compete for talent and keep salaries artificially low. https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-fi-tn-apple-google-co...

That's an argument for them being a monopsony, not a monopoly. And since they were colluding with other companies, it fits the definition of a cartel better.

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

#78

Post by candiodari »

shereadsthenews wrote: post #42
thayne wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

When Gmail came out it was also a gigantic money incinerator into which Google shoveled search ads revenue. It is easy to show that Google used one product line to break into another line of business. It would be harder to convince me that this harmed consumers.

Anti-monopoly law is not meant to prevent companies from investing in different product lines. Monopoly law is meant to prevent companies from using one product to force customers to buy into another product.

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

#79

Post by candiodari »

kodz4 wrote: post #45
nknealk wrote: post #38

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…

How can something Google offers for free be bad for consumers has already been answered by the EU - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_vs._Google The rest of the world is more easily bought and paid for by Google lobbying because every Politician needs to use Google Ads+YouTube Ads+Android Apps to get elected. EDIT: Here's one more useful link - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Google

Personally I find the cases the EU has against Google to be, well pathetic. Absolutely without merit. The sites that felt disadvantaged, whom the EU worked on behalf of, were scummy comparison shopping sites.

The other complaints, the "right to forget" legislation had similar scummy people behind it. Politicians that had committed fraud on multiple counts and wanted to hide this.

That pretty much leaves the android case ... I don't know too much about that, I must say. I might add that android is not entirely free for device manufacturers. Probably cheaper than any other option, yes, but not free.

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

#80

Post by eitland »

mav3rick wrote: post #74
ardy42 wrote: post #24

> I know that Google is super powerful and has great products but what exactly are (if any) examples of Google showing anti-competitive behaviour? At least at one point, they nagged you incessantly to install Chrome when you used Google Search. I would attribute Chrome's current dominance [1] to that fact, and that fact alone. That's uncannily like the anti-competitive behavior Microsoft was judged to have used to pu…

That is such BS. Microsoft is making it increasingly harder to use a different browser on their OS. No mention of that. When they do it, "it's their OS, it's fair". Google is not forcing anyone to install this browser nor does it auto install when you navigate to Google search.

> Google is not forcing anyone to install this browser nor does it auto install when you navigate to Google search.

Making it so that a number of the worlds largest properties only work in your own browser comes very close to "forcing" in my opinion.

When should a company be forced to make sure its products works with other companies products? Thats not for me to decide but personally I think there's some extra responsibility for very large companies and personally I'm surprised they haven't been hit with one or two major lawsuits over Chrome yet.

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