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“Google Is as Close to a Natural Monopoly as the Bell System Was in 1956″

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Re: “Google Is as Close to a Natural Monopoly as the Bell System Was in 1956″

#131

Post by jhall1468 »

ellyagg wrote: post #46
warcher wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jesus, yes, how did I have to scroll down this far before I read "ATT was a government monopoly"? Google doesn't have a monopoly on anything. They have the best search engine, but I can switch in seconds. Likewise the rest of their products all have very well established and really quite functional competitors. That I don't use, cause I like the big G, but I could if they annoyed me too much.

But new and small businesses can't switch where they go to raise awareness, which always seems to be an underappreciated consequence of Google's monopoly. You either have to buy Google ads or do SEO, and if you SEO, Google can pull the rug out from under you at any moment and you have no recourse.

Consumer protections are for the consumer, not businesses. Plenty of companies have managed to get brand awareness without Google. If you build your business to be entirely dependent on a single point-of-entry, then your business can have the "rug" pulled out by whatever the owner of that point is.

Re: “Google Is as Close to a Natural Monopoly as the Bell System Was in 1956″

#132

Post by ocdtrekkie »

polishTar wrote: post #52
FussyZeus wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But wouldn't that technically apply to only those working at Google, not the other Alphabet companies? Not that it really matters, both are utterly without meaning. I was just using it to show how their corporate personality has changed over the years.

That's a really silly way of doing it then. Besides, "do the right thing" is more restrictive than just "don't be evil"

"Do the right thing" for whom? Making money is definitely doing the right thing... for Google's bottom line.

Re: “Google Is as Close to a Natural Monopoly as the Bell System Was in 1956″

#133

Post by rhino369 »

frgtpsswrdlame wrote: post #26
panabee wrote: post #15

It would be great to see more balanced discourse on monopolies, especially in a software-dominated world. Most analyses and articles fixate on the costs of monopolies. Let's assume the worst of Google and conclude they abused their search monopoly. Innovation in search was stifled. Competitors were damaged and achieved only a fraction of their potential. For instance, Yelp might be worth $15B instead of $3B in a worl…

>But Google's search monopoly and concomitant cash flows also gave society free worldwide communication, self-driving cars, cheaper smartphones, free digital maps, and countless other benefits. To be clear you can't be sure those things wouldn't be around if google hadn't had a search monopoly. Maybe we would have even better digital maps for example had there been way more firms competing. Monopolies can't just be m…

Plus, a lot of those products already existed. Mapquest was free digital maps. Everyone and their mother had free webmail and web chat.

Android didn't make smart phones cheap, maybe slightly cheaper, but not cheap.

Still waiting on self driving cars.

Re: “Google Is as Close to a Natural Monopoly as the Bell System Was in 1956″

#134

Post by blowski »

sfifs wrote: post #88
redm wrote: post #53

I think the key point here is not whether Google is abusing its effective monopoly willingly, its that it exists at all. There may be alternatives, but not viable ones. Try not supporting Chrome or ignoring Chrome requirements such as security mandates, you will go out of business. You can say these are 'good' for the consumer but the fact that Google has the ability to unilaterally change the web itself is partially…

This appears to be a common misconception that monopolies are bad from a public policy standpoint. For public policy, the existence of a monopoly is neither here nor there. Monopolies are problem ONLY IF their operations causes negative economic effects to consumers - typically by raising prices. Indeed in many cases (eg. Transport, Infrastructure) a monopoly is actively granted in return for guaranteed availability…

"Absolute power corrupts absolutely."

Google clearly has a monopoly. Eventually they will abuse it, even if they're not doing so already (which is open to debate). The stronger their control, the more damage they will do and the harder it will be to release ourselves from it.

Monopolies are bad, although sometimes they are the least bad choice. I see plenty of good alternatives to Google's monopoly.

Re: “Google Is as Close to a Natural Monopoly as the Bell System Was in 1956″

#135

Post by ocdtrekkie »

FussyZeus wrote: post #7
RodericDay wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've replaced Google Maps with my iPhone's Apple Maps, and I barely use e-mail other than for transactional matters, so I'm pretty close. What's your recommendation for e-mail replacement?

I've fallen in love with Outlook.com. I know, I know, Microsoft is just as if not more evil but frankly I've found their commitment to privacy to carry very well through the service, plus, the spam-blocking is excellent. Best I've used.

While I think Google is more evil than Microsoft at present, both companies fall well into the category of organizations that will sacrifice any principles necessary to profit. When companies like Google and Microsoft are on top, they become abusive to maintain control of the market.

Microsoft is down and out right now, and I'm using some of their services a bit more myself, but you need to bear in mind that if the tides change, so will Microsoft eventually.

Sidebar: For email, I recommend FastMail.

Re: “Google Is as Close to a Natural Monopoly as the Bell System Was in 1956″

#136

Post by deelowe »

ubernostrum wrote: post #102
deelowe wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are tons of video sharing services. Arguably Twitch is doing a pretty good job of taking on youtube. Do you expect a competitor to simply copy youtube and be successful? Business doesn't really work that way.

I don't mean a live-streaming service. I mean a place where you upload videos for on-demand viewing by others. You will have an uphill battle against Google ranking penalties, while YouTube gets a free pass.

This is getting pretty close to FUD. What penalties are you talking about? As additional examples, I come across Vimeo and daily motion videos all the time when using video search.

Re: “Google Is as Close to a Natural Monopoly as the Bell System Was in 1956″

#137

Post by narrowrail »

beagle3 wrote: post #119
bedhead wrote: post #91

One big difference is that Google is free its customers.

No. Google is free to its users, but the users are the product. The customers -- the advertisers -- pay dearly.

'No cost' is probably a better phrase here. Especially because the word 'free' can mean:

1) no immediate monetary cost ($)

2)or shorthand for freedom, as in related to liberty. However,

"Generally, liberty is distinctly differentiated from freedom in that freedom is primarily, if not exclusively, the ability to do as one wills and what one has the power to do; whereas liberty concerns the absence of arbitrary restraints and takes into account the rights of all involved. As such, the exercise of liberty is subject to capability and limited by the rights of others."

Re: “Google Is as Close to a Natural Monopoly as the Bell System Was in 1956″

#138

Post by AnimalMuppet »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #117
ouid wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Bing seems pretty close in search quality, but yet few switch over. a) Why would anyone switch if they are both equal and both free? b) Most people use chrome. Most people don't change their default search engine. c) As much as people pretend to hate Google, they actually hate Microsoft a lot more, and for good reason. Microsoft operates on bad faith far more frequently than Google does, most of their business decis…

In fact, you are self-defeating your arguments. Chrome was entirely built to be leveraged to force people to use Google Search, since people don't change their default search engine. Bear in mind, they paid Apple and Mozilla each over a billion dollars to be everyone's default search. Sundar Pichai, the current CEO of Google, got started by pushing the Google Toolbar as one of those bloatware add-ons when you install…

> ... and they make Microsoft look like an innocent kitten in comparison.

It sounds like you don't remember Microsoft back in the day. Google "Halloween Memos". (Edit: Note particularly the bit about "de-commodifying protocols", that is, finding ways to break standards and create lock-in.)

Microsoft literally paid web sites to put HTML in their pages so that Netscape wouldn't handle properly.

Microsoft literally generated false error messages when they detected a product from a competitor. (IIRC, that one was on a spreadsheet, and the product was maybe a DOS clone? There wasn't anything wrong with the clone, but the error message made it look like there was.)

An equivalent, today, for Google would be if, when you typed bing.com into Chrome, it took you to Google. Or if Android detected Microsoft apps and made them break in mysterious ways.

ouid's point is valid. Google is more passive in anticompetitive behavior. (That doesn't make the behavior good. It makes it less bad than Microsoft. Microsoft is hardly the "innocent kitten" here. However, I will concede that Microsoft hasn't been as bad as they were for... maybe a decade?)

Re: “Google Is as Close to a Natural Monopoly as the Bell System Was in 1956″

#139

Post by notduncansmith »

ghaff wrote: post #105
jessaustin wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A monopoly is a seller with few or no competing sellers. In many cases this is bad for consumers, so many governments have taken steps to dismantle some monopolies or ameliorate their bad effects. It's not clear that "natural monopoly" is a category that has any members, but the theory is that a natural monopoly is a monopoly such that dismantling it would have other bad effects that would be worse than the direct ba…

The assumption around natural monopolies is that they're the inevitable result of the economic dynamics of an industry. Therefore if you carve things up to force competition, the theory goes, you're going to increase capital requirements overall and therefore prices to consumers. It's also fairly clear that at least over long enough time horizons there aren't many natural monopolies.

> It's also fairly clear that at least over long enough time horizons there aren't many natural monopolies.

Would you say this is because the benefits to decentralization don't often bear themselves out as visibly as the costs over a shorter time horizon?

In other words, is a "natural monopoly" simply externalizing the costs of centralization to the future?

Re: “Google Is as Close to a Natural Monopoly as the Bell System Was in 1956″

#140

Post by rhino369 »

Aloha wrote: post #115
tuna-piano wrote: post #77

The term "Natural Monopoly" has a special meaning besides just the common definition of both words, which is missing from this discussion, but is in my opinion the most interesting topic of discussion. Basically all software fits the economic definition of "Natural Monopoly". Natural monopolies exist in situations where the fixed cost is large and the marginal (per-customer) cost is small. In these situations, it onl…

You hit it on the head.. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_monopoly I will strongly argue that most utilities are natural monopolies, google is not like that.. anyone could create a equivalent functionality search engine without massive resources to do so, this is most certainly not the case with say, a cellular carrier, where to build out one moderately sized market your're looking at starting cost ~100 million…

How much does it cost to build a competitive search engine?

I'm not sure it's that cheap. Bing launched in 2006. Billions of dollars were sunk into it by a major company who used their monopoly over desktop to push the service. And it only became profitable in 2016.

The barriers to entry seem extremely high.

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