Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How did Google get so big?

cbsnews.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 417 posts

Re: How did Google get so big?

#51

Post by pvg »

ProAm wrote: post #10
wilsonnb2 wrote: post #6

So 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 doubt regulators have ever suggested breaking up a company into a bunch of dependent subsidiaries. There's probably not an office at the DoJ where lawyers are turning over tables and screaming 'you have foiled us again with your restructuring shenanigans, Google'.

Re: How did Google get so big?

#52

Post by trhway »

avar wrote: post #20
wilsonnb2 wrote: post #6

So 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.

> Keep fining them more and more money > until they stop anti-competitive practices? I believe you're referring to the EU's fines against Google here. In that case that's pretty much the only weapon the EU has. They can ultimately deny Google market access to the EU, and argue that case at the WTO, or seize Google's assets in the EU, but they can't decide to split up a US-based legal entity.

Due to various double sandwiches there a lot of non US Googles with good assets to go after.

Re: How did Google get so big?

#53

Post by frgtpsswrdlame »

TomMarius wrote: post #44
sincerely wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, you're implying that "technological progress" is inherently a good thing.

Isn't it? Can you support your statement? Edit: am I really being downvoted for asking for evidence that technological progress (the driving force that made all people on Earth extraordinaly more rich) is bad? What is wrong with you, people?

Some technological progress is good and some of it bad.

Re: How did Google get so big?

#54

Post by davidwihl »

paulpauper wrote: post #12
css wrote: post #7

> 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.

adwords and adsense are patented by Google. DoubleClick was a more impactful acquisition than YouTube, hence $3.1B vs $1.5B

https://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/14/technology/14DoubleClick....

Re: How did Google get so big?

#55

Post by fixermark »

acover wrote: post #30
wilsonnb2 wrote: post #6

So 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 dou…

... and benefits from horizontal scaling.

Maps is okay, search is okay. Maps that can take signal from search to figure out what people care about, and search that can utilize geographic signal to guess what a person might want as an answer for "restaurants near me" is huge.

Re: How did Google get so big?

#56

Post by fixermark »

komali2 wrote: post #43
acover wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 dou…

Even if everything about search was open source, how would an upstart competitor possibly compete on the hardware front? A single Google-style data center would imo be an insurmountable capital cost.

They could start on Google Cloud and work their way out from there. ;)

Re: How did Google get so big?

#57

Post by refurb »

solotronics wrote: post #37
SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #2

"Bing, their competition, has 2% of the market. They have 90%." Who has the other 8%?

Because of having 90% of the search engine market they have a uniquely comprehensive view into the human mind. I would not be suprised if these huge data aggregation companies lead the race into sentient AI.

I'm not sure their view into the human mind goes much beyond insights gleamed from searches like "cat videos" and "good restaurants".

Re: How did Google get so big?

#58

Post by xg15 »

thekingofh wrote: post #13
wilsonnb2 wrote: post #6

So 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…

Google doesn't keep others out of the search market through any other means than just being better...

They have 98% market share in europe. They also provide the main revenue source (AdWords) and the most important implementation of the web stack (Chrome) - which fitted with mandatory automated updating. If you combine those factors, they are in a position where they can to a large part dictate what the de-facto standards for a successful website are. They can also rapidly change those standards or choose to promote or bury certain technologies.

If that is not an advantage over competitors, I don't know what is.

And this is just for the web. On Android - about half the worldwide market for mobile apps - they are not even a market participant at all. They are basically the government.

Re: How did Google get so big?

#59

Post by refulgentis »

Alupis wrote: post #35
fipple wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's Android, YouTube, 510 Systems, and the constellation of acquisitions made to create Google Apps, at a minimum.

> There's Android, YouTube, 510 Systems, and the constellation of acquisitions made to create Google Apps, at a minimum. Buying Android hardly would have triggered anti-trust investigations given Apple's significant market share at the time, and the many other significant competitors (BlackBerry and Nokia just to name two). Same goes with YouTube - Google bought it before it was a smash success, and before people tho…

nit: Android was purchased long before Apple entered the market. Doesn't change your argument, no one was expecting vendors to rush to a new OS because of the iPhone revolution.

Re: How did Google get so big?

#60

Post by fixermark »

lovich wrote: post #29
thekingofh wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

When a user searches for "Restaurants near me," how does Google answer that question reliably without using its own mapping service?

Trying to feed that query to a third-party service and then give users the results back adds significant risk that the third-party changes their API, changes their feature-set in an incompatible way, goes out of business, gets in a corporate fight with the search provider...

It's both cheaper and more convenient for the end-user if the search provider handles the mapping itself (in the absence of some kind of universal understood interface standard, complete with some kind of incentive to adhere to it).

Post reply on HN