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How did Google get so big?

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Re: How did Google get so big?

#111

Post by briandear »

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…

How does splitting Google benefit the consumer? Is the consumer being harmed right now? Are they being price gouged or forced to use inferior products?

Re: How did Google get so big?

#112

Post by briandear »

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.

You could say the same about shipping companies, airlines or car companies. Yet, competition is everywhere despite high capital costs. Even space exploration has competition. High capital costs aren’t anti-competitive.

Re: How did Google get so big?

#113

Post by eftychis »

TomMarius wrote: post #62
frgtpsswrdlame wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some technological progress is good and some of it bad.

No technological progress is bad. Sometimes this progress is used badly, but knowledge is definitely not bad.

Well, I disagree. Partial knowledge and technology can be bad and extremely dangerous.

In the 19th- early 20th century they were treating radioactive substances like they were chew toys (making toys etc). The worst nuclear accident happened near lake Karachay, because they had the technology to create nuclear weapons, but did not understand, or knew the danger and how to manage the waste. (Russians were trying to catch up and create their own arsenal, had acquired fragmented knowledge that were piecing together.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Karachay

https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/jul/20/graveyard-ear...

Re: How did Google get so big?

#114

Post by nine_k »

chargingmylaser wrote: post #76
fixermark wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems to be an open question whether letting a corp play benevolent dictator for some timeframe, at least, is a useful thing.

Bell Labs was a monopoly (at least for a time period) and yielded countless high-impact, transformative innovations that a company with fewer resources (probably) would not have been able to develop. I think (although I could be wrong) most would agree they were a net benefit to society.

Bell Labs was not a monopoly: it did not prevent operation of other research labs. E.g. the highly successful Xeroc PARC co-existed with them for a decade or two.

Bell the telecom company was a monopoly that financed Bell Labs. Bell Labs did not go down in flames when Bell was partitioned in 1982, and continued providing the world with great achievements.

Re: How did Google get so big?

#115

Post by RestlessMind »

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

If I am going to search for a business near me, I always prefer a Google maps based solution right there on the search results page, rather than having to navigate to yet another page (say, Yelp's) which is going to nag me to download their app and going to provide a shitty experience otherwise. Continuing along the same example, Yelp is not even going to provide me with all the useful service I might need (like driving directions to that business) and I will have to again navigate back to Google maps.

Google's practice of showing me data from other products (eg. Maps) right there on the search pages is definitely a win for me as a consumer.

Re: How did Google get so big?

#116

Post by grosjona »

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…

I think that Google's dominance has almost nothing to do with technology and almost everything to do with customer lock-in.

For me, duckduckgo.com is as good as Google but I still use Google because it's the default search engine for Chrome's address bar - And that's where I do all my searches from these days. If Duckduckgo made their own browser which was of the same quality as Chrome then I would definitely consider using it and switching to Duckduckgo for search as well.

Re: How did Google get so big?

#117

Post by briandear »

xg15 wrote: post #58
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…

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 stan…

Market share does not equal monopoly. Why aren’t Europeans building better search? It isn’t because of Google, it’s because of the risk-adverse tendencies of investors in Europe. If you pitched a search engine to a Euro-VC, you wouldn’t even get asked for a deck. Europe isn’t very innovation driven: they prefer the 2x rather than the 200x. The proof is simple: just look at the flow of European investment money: rarely do they invest in high-risk, high-reward ventures. While in the US, you can raise money for almost anything.

Re: How did Google get so big?

#118

Post by philg_jr »

RestlessMind wrote: post #105
talltimtom wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 do…

How about...Nokia? Seimens? SAP?

Re: How did Google get so big?

#119

Post by sk_hazratali »

I think that Google's dominance has almost nothing to do with technology and almost everything to do with customer lock-in. For me, duckduckgo.com is as good as Google but I still use Google because it's the default search engine for Chrome's address bar - And that's where I do all my searches from these days. If Duckduckgo made their own browser which was of the same quality as Chrome then I would definitely consider using it and switching to Duckduckgo for search as well. https://www.sherekhudahazratali.com/2018/07/ek-juma-se-dusre...

Re: How did Google get so big?

#120

Post by Aunche »

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.

I think you mean selectively enforcing. They have yet to fine VW for cheating on emissions.
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