How did Google get so big? • Hacker News Board

Re: How did Google get so big?

#101

Post by WilliamEdward » Fri, Jul 27, 2018, 7:52 PM UTC

jsty wrote: post #28

wallflower wrote: post #8

If 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)

Companies actually do this behind the scenes. They list individual employees as financial assets.

Re: How did Google get so big?

#102

Post by c3534l » Fri, Jul 27, 2018, 7:53 PM UTC

zjaffee wrote: post #78

ur-whale wrote: post #25

Why 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 ope…

It's not so much they are hurting anyone, since they have made it virtually impossible to compete with them. Say you do a search for a particular location, the first thing that pops up to the the top of the page is a box with some information pulled from wikipedia and a link/image of it on google maps. Search for a band, and you see the same with links to youtube and google music. Search for online storage and you se…

Bing works just fine, but people don't use it because it's not what they're used to. Rarely does Google have an actual monopoly where new competitors can't enter the field - in fact, for every Google product I can give you a viable alternative. The only difference is that Google is winning.

Re: How did Google get so big?

#103

Post by Aunche » Fri, Jul 27, 2018, 7:56 PM UTC

zjaffee wrote: post #45

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.

This is how they would do it. When Microsoft ware being ruled against for anti trust, they would have forced them to split the operating systems business from the rest of their product businesses. My guess would be that google would get broken up in a way that separated things that were strategically vertically integrated, say, search+android (their big platforms for directing you at their services) and things like y…

Technically, it would almost be easier to rewrite Google from scratch than to split it up. Google is a giant monorepo, so anything can depend on anything else. Also, all their services run on the same data centers.

Re: How did Google get so big?

#104

Post by eftychis » Fri, Jul 27, 2018, 7:56 PM UTC

izzydata wrote: post #31

tinbad wrote: post #17

"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." Behemoths like Google emerge every time new inventions lead to the creation of new markets followed by mass adoption during a relatively short timeframe, when regulations don't exist yet. It has happened in history time and time a…

That seems to be implying it is inherently a bad thing. Is trying to stop innovative companies also a hindrance to technological progress?

Innovative companies on their own are not really innovative really. A monopoly enforces their opinion and product in the world. If you don't like their price or approach too bad for you. You are kept out of the game (it is a monopoly right).

As has been mentioned a bunch of times here, Google and Facebook have all too naturally embraced Microsoft's (and prior monopolies' ) approach of embrace, extend, and extinguish. There were at least 2-3 articles this week about the games Google plays (e.g. youtube loading faster on Chrome due to Google going ahead with their own suggested implementation without consensus).

I don't think there is any economic model out there that even argues monopolies are a good idea in some fashion.

Re: How did Google get so big?

#105

Post by RestlessMind » Fri, Jul 27, 2018, 7:57 PM UTC

talltimtom wrote: post #97

tinbad wrote: post #17

"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." Behemoths like Google emerge every time new inventions lead to the creation of new markets followed by mass adoption during a relatively short timeframe, when regulations don't exist yet. It has happened in history time and time a…

Regulations do exist... Europe seems to be the only once even superficially enforcing them.

Which successful companies came out of EU in the last 20 years? How well do they stack up against US (Google, Amazon, Facebook, Uber etc) or China (Tencent, Alibaba etc)? If not many, does that mean EU entrepreneurs are hindered by the regulations?

One might also argue that European model is better because it might prevent one company from dominating the market. But if that is the case, why does EU face technology dominance from American companies (smartphones, search, e-commerce, operating systems etc), rather than having that marketshare captured by European companies?

Re: How did Google get so big?

#106

Post by observering » Fri, Jul 27, 2018, 7:58 PM UTC

Due to the salacious appetite of millions of people for gossip and related info, and for candid camera-style videos on youtube. This isn't rocket science but a keen understand of human action and reaction.

Re: How did Google get so big?

#107

Post by nine_k » Fri, Jul 27, 2018, 7:59 PM UTC

deklerk wrote: post #98

b_b wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point of antitrust regulations is to stop the anti-innovation practices in the first place, so while they may appear to be a 'benevolent dictator,' they will quickly turn for the worse.

> The point of antitrust regulations is to stop the anti-innovation practices Is that true? That doesn't match the definition of any antitrust regulation I'm aware of. AFAIK antitrust regulation is intended to enforce _fairness_, not _innovation_. Often the two go hand in hand, of course, but I think it's worth not conflating the two.

Hmm, fairness? "Level playing field", maybe.

The idea of anti-trust regulation is to break up companies that cornered a market, that is, (mostly) prevented competition on it. Breaking them up serves to make more, smaller companies (out of the split giant) that would start to compete again.

Anti-trust laws can be seen as pro-market laws that try to prevent long periods of monopolized markets without waiting for a naturally occurring disruption, instead providing a mandated disruption.

Whether it's _efficient_, and whether it works as intended, can be discussed.

Re: How did Google get so big?

#108

Post by skadamat » Fri, Jul 27, 2018, 7:59 PM UTC

Ben Thompson from Stratechery has some good thoughts on what makes Google tricky to regulate:

- Google: https://stratechery.com/company/google/

- Regulation: https://stratechery.com/topic/regulation/

His vastly oversimplified point is that most anti-trust regulation focuses on supply. Owning all of the printing equipment and distribution networks in newspapers gave you leverage. Google is instead a demand-side aggregator (they don't own the content on their product, but own the choke point, which is the consumer facing user experience of having a single, simple, easy to use search engine).

Re: How did Google get so big?

#109

Post by mirimir » Fri, Jul 27, 2018, 7:59 PM UTC

OK, so I watched it all happen.

Back in the day, I loved AltaVista. And then I dicovered Google. And found that it consistently gave me better results. At least at first, Google grew because its stuff worked better than the competition's.

Still, it is pretty clear that Google now excludes competitors through discrimination in search results. But it's hard to prove, because search algorithms are so bloody complicated. And because SEO warfare is so intense. Google can just claim that any discrimination is just collateral damage.

> Google is the gatekeeper for-- for the World Wide Web, for the internet as we know it.'

Sad but true. So other than DDG, are there any good privacy-friendly search services? Startpage seems to just repackage Google. Also, are there any search services that are less censored than Google?

> [Google] denied it was a monopoly in search or search advertising, citing many competitors including Amazon and Facebook.

That's a joke, right?

Re: How did Google get so big?

#110

Post by bepotts » Fri, Jul 27, 2018, 8:01 PM UTC

tills13 wrote: post #93

zjaffee wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not so much they are hurting anyone, since they have made it virtually impossible to compete with them. Say you do a search for a particular location, the first thing that pops up to the the top of the page is a box with some information pulled from wikipedia and a link/image of it on google maps. Search for a band, and you see the same with links to youtube and google music. Search for online storage and you se…

if they're _purposefully_ ranking their own services above competing services, then yes, I agree they should be fined until they stop. _however_, more often than not, their own service is _exactly_ what I'm looking for - be it GPM/YouTube/Maps/etc. It's not really their fault they're head and shoulders above the competition/the de-facto provider for most of the content people search for every day (well, maybe it is t…

Exactly. I really don't understand why people try and muddy the waters around Google products. I'm not forced to use Google; Google products are just damn good.

Having a monopoly in a market due to the fact that your product is just that good isn't a bad thing, and punishing companies for being successful sets an awful precedent (which is why breaking up Google isn't going to happen). From search, maps, email, YouTube, and to photos, Google products are widely used because they're completely free (aside from the data collection portion) and they're best in class.

Please don't lie to us and act like Google's monopoly position is hurting the market. I'm sure Google is doing some shady stuff on the edges, but nothing so egregious to warrant antitrust action.