Earlier quoted context omitted.
Off the top of my head: Yahoo! and DuckDuck Go might be ahead of Bing.
DDG is essentially a reskin of Bing search. Yahoo! is also Bing.
I thought they have a number of sources, of which bing is the primary, but sole?
How did Google get so big?
21–30 of 417 posts
Re: How did Google get so big?
#22So if Google is a monopoly, what should be done about it? Split it up into separate, competing mini-Googles? Keep fining them more and more money until they stop anti-competitive practices? Split off Maps/Android/Drive/etc into separate companies so that Google can't use their search monopoly to dominate those fields? I'm genuinely not sure what the best way to go about this would be.
Im pretty sure this is why Alphabet was formed, they sort of split themselves up as a preventative measure.
I think they did it for investors, not for the sake of regulators. Investors were, I think, beginning to get a little tired of Google's string of goofy product flops — investors wanted Google to focus on what makes it money: ads.
Re: How did Google get so big?
#23> Steve Kroft: Were any of those acquisitions questioned by the antitrust division of the Justice Department? > Gary Reback: Some were investigated, but only superficially, the government just really isn't enforcing our antitrust laws. And that's what's happened. None of these acquisitions have been challenged Granted, most of Google's 200+ acquisitions would not trigger any scrutiny, but this line is mind boggling.
I think only 2 acquisitions have had a impact. the one for adwords/adsense patent and one other. The rest have been to poach talent and other stuff or were duds.
If the other isn't YouTube, you may be missing something.
Re: How did Google get so big?
#24If I could give a six word response for the technical side: "Jeff Dean, Sanjay Ghemawat and team". To paraphrase some Cal/UC Berkeley professor that I cannot remember, he said that the problem with scaling is that when you go up a magnitude or more, you may need a qualitatively different solution for the same problem. Jeff Dean and Sanjay Ghemawat and their team have time and time again managed to design and build st…
Also, the Google SRE book makes the point that they couldn't have achieved their scale w/out approaching ops from an engineering perspective. Linearly hiring ops people as services scale would have been too expensive.
Re: How did Google get so big?
#25Why is Google being big a problem? Who are they hurting by being big at this time?
[edit]: to elaborate, I was under the impression that the whole point of anti-monopoly regulations was to protect consumers from monopolistic predatory practices, not to prevent monopolies from actually existing per se.
Hence my question: is there anyone actually being hurt by the currently limited choice of search engines or phone operating systems?
Also, what prevents someone from trying to build a much better one?
If Google starts to misbehave as a monopoly, fine, let the USG (themselves a monopoly, btw) do their thing go after them.
But as long as they provide a superior service for free (yeah, I know, you're the product, blah, blah), I'm not sure I'm seeing the problem.
Re: How did Google get so big?
#26Google got so big by causing its server-side adtech businesses to collude in such a way as to restrain trade and forestall competitors.
Re: How did Google get so big?
#27They attracted (some of) the best talent.
Re: How did Google get so big?
#28If I could give a six word response for the technical side: "Jeff Dean, Sanjay Ghemawat and team". To paraphrase some Cal/UC Berkeley professor that I cannot remember, he said that the problem with scaling is that when you go up a magnitude or more, you may need a qualitatively different solution for the same problem. Jeff Dean and Sanjay Ghemawat and their team have time and time again managed to design and build st…
Someday Google's going to have to list the risk of Jeff Dean leaving on their 10-K ... (not entirely joking)
Re: How did Google get so big?
#29So if Google is a monopoly, what should be done about it? Split it up into separate, competing mini-Googles? Keep fining them more and more money until they stop anti-competitive practices? Split off Maps/Android/Drive/etc into separate companies so that Google can't use their search monopoly to dominate those fields? I'm genuinely not sure what the best way to go about this would be.
There's nothing objectively wrong with a large company unless they begin to squash competition with regulatory lock-in. This is what led to the breakup of AT&T/Bell. As far as I can tell, Google doesn't keep others out of the search market through any other means than just being better than the other guys. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I certainly haven't seen any shortage of search engines and alternative cloud servi…
They routinely put their other products on top of the search pages, such as Google reviews over Yelp or Google maps over OpenMap results.
The issue isn't even so much as Google is dominating search, because they have been providing a better product in almost all cases until recently. The issue is that they are using their dominance in search to try and dominate other markets
Re: How did Google get so big?
#30So if Google is a monopoly, what should be done about it? Split it up into separate, competing mini-Googles? Keep fining them more and more money until they stop anti-competitive practices? Split off Maps/Android/Drive/etc into separate companies so that Google can't use their search monopoly to dominate those fields? I'm genuinely not sure what the best way to go about this would be.
Technology often leads to a natural monopoly as it has high fixed costs and low variable costs.
One way I can see changing this dynamic is using open source services. That way anyone is able to clone, improve or change them. Provide consumer choice.
However businesses are aiming for monopolies. Crowd funding and open source might change the dynamic.
It's probably too late for search as the lead is too far. I also doubt most people care to solve a problem before it happens.