161–170 of 260 posts
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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.
This is a silly game. Proof by corporate motto.
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Whats the viable alternative to Google Search? Sure you can use Bing as a customer, but if you're a website operator you HAVE to stay on Google's good side. (not always easy to do) Or you can not base your business on the fickleness of Google's search algorithms. Ben Thompson (stratechery.com) posts one article per week publically and charged $100 a year for his newsletter. The only time he gave numbers, he has over…
> There are other ways to build a business that don't depend on search. There are also other ways to run a household that don't depend on running water. (Heck, my great-grandpa never complained about having an outhouse.) Are you saying your local water utility should be an unregulated monopoly?
I cannot even begin to explain the insidious local politics surrounding the local water utility in the city where my folks used to live and the way they forced homeowners to hook up to the ever-expanding sewer at cost to the homeowners, regardless of whether their existing septic systems were adequate or not, to pad the pockets of the contractors paid by the city and to aid in further annexation of the area outside the city.
A water utility run by the local government as a monopoly is only regulated by local politics, and if you have any experience with local politics you know that's mostly just figuring out who's the biggest good ol' boy.
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Whats the viable alternative to Google Search? Sure you can use Bing as a customer, but if you're a website operator you HAVE to stay on Google's good side. (not always easy to do) Or you can not base your business on the fickleness of Google's search algorithms. Ben Thompson (stratechery.com) posts one article per week publically and charged $100 a year for his newsletter. The only time he gave numbers, he has over…
> There are other ways to build a business that don't depend on search. There are also other ways to run a household that don't depend on running water. (Heck, my great-grandpa never complained about having an outhouse.) Are you saying your local water utility should be an unregulated monopoly?
(The flip side would be "Are you saying Google should be a nationalized, government-regulated search engine?")
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>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…
Never mind free. In the UK most people would save £200/y with no interruption in service simply by switching energy suppliers, and yet they don't...
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So how do you feel about Apple? When Google wins it's because they make a better product than the other guy. Apple can deliver a clearly inferior product (e.g. the last 5 years of iTunes) and still win because their customers are using iDevices. Google doesn't have that lock-in and they still do really well which makes me feel like they're not really a monopoly.
I consider that also unfair, just like I consider Microsofts participation in the browser market unfair. That said, I know that splitting companies until they only do one thing isn’t possible. But Google’s scale of domination is quite unique. Especially recently, as they’ve forced Android devs into using Google services more and more.
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> There are other ways to build a business that don't depend on search. There are also other ways to run a household that don't depend on running water. (Heck, my great-grandpa never complained about having an outhouse.) Are you saying your local water utility should be an unregulated monopoly?
You seem to be trying to build an analogy between a person's right to a material necessity and a corporation's right to a convenient market. I don't think the analogy holds. (The flip side would be "Are you saying Google should be a nationalized, government-regulated search engine?")
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I agree with what you wrote, but the comparison is apples to oranges: Google customers are businesses; end users (who CAN switch easily) are the product. Right now the only (supposedly) viable competitor is Facebook, but it's more of an advertising duopoly that divides the market - all the people I know who advertise say that you use FB for brand/interaction/marketing and Google for sales, and for a specific spend it…
> Google customers are businesses; end users (who CAN switch easily) are the product. I am a Google customer. They provide me with a product (Google) which I pay for by allowing Google to display advertisements on the results. A business is also a Google customer. They pay Google to display ads to a visitors to the website. But that distinction is moot anyway. Businesses aren't covered by consumer protections because…
Rest assured that if you were a google customer, the IRS would want their pound of flesh from that barter exchange you and google are having.
Ma Bell's monopoly has never been "natural". It has been enforced by FCC, ever since FCC was formed for that specific purpose in 1934. Even before that, ICC through the Kingsbury Commitment had adopted an ill-considered and unjustified hands-off policy with respect to Ma Bell's anticompetitive actions.
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Replace the words "benevolent dictator" with "winner." People go to Google by choice, they win based on consumer preference. Unlike say, Windows, there is nothing locking you into Google you don't have to use Chrome or GMAIl, or their search. Yes a lot of people are okay with one company controlling 80% percent of a market if - they get there by relatively fair practices, there are clear and viable alternatives, and…
> Unlike say, Windows, there is nothing locking you into Google you don't have to use Chrome or GMAIl, or their search. I agree about their search, but problem with Chrome isn't just lack of alternatives. Problem is that Google have too much power over web standards and all of competitors have to follow. Even Mozilla had to implement DRM. Gmail is similar: Google never directly used their power against competitors, b…
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But unlike Google (AFAIK), Microsoft played very dirty - they eventually paid for it (see e.g. [0]), but the gains from remaining a not-even-threatened monopoly where at 100-1000 times larger than what they paid. I experienced this first hand at a company I worked for in the early '90s - we had agreements signed with many PC manufacturers to include our software (which was a DOS launcher of sort, that -- in those day…
There are also instances in which Google has played not particularly fairly—releasing Chrome-only products such as Google Earth that require NaCl, for example.
However, I think this is not comparable to what Microsoft did in the OS business (the story I told, BeOS, DR-DOS, IE Bundling) -- an apt comparison would be if the Google Search Engine had been Chrome only, or mobile Googling was Android only.
Google Earth is a niche product - I don't see how this (or any other less-than-fair Google practice I've ever heard of) can be considered abusing one's monopoly in any way.