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

151–160 of 417 posts

Re: How did Google get so big?

#151

Post by samschooler »

ttul wrote: post #147

IMHO Google should be regulated as a utility. Search is obviously as key to modern life as is electricity, water, highways, etc. Why do we leave this critical infrastructure completely under the control of one corporation, which is itself under the control of just a tiny handful of billionaires? Now, I mostly agree with Sergey and Larry’s investments, and I love the long term approach and big picture view they take.…

I agree that Google has a large control over the search market (and others), but it does not need to be regulated as a utility. Largely because you can just... switch. Really easily in fact.

I've been using DuckDuckGo.com as my primary search engine for the past 3 years and have never looked back. The results are most of the time better (sometimes worse, but so it goes).

Re: How did Google get so big?

#152

Post by turc1656 »

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.

It's not complicated. But for some reason everyone misses the obvious. You go after the people responsible for taking these actions, not the "company" itself as an ethereal creation. If someone (or multiple people, as here) are in violation of Title 15, they are committing felonies according to the law. These felonies happen to be punishable by up to 10 years in prison, in addition to steep fines. However, the fines for the people who would be found guilty wont' make a dent so it won't deter them. Which is why you send them to jail. And, BTW, that's 10 years per count. If, for example these people are found guilty of multiple violations, send them to jail for a decade for each violation. Problem solved. No executives would be engaging in this activity anymore. And Title 15 definitely, absolutely supports the prosecution of both companies as entities and the individuals behind it. It also makes the mere attempt to monopolize any aspect of trade or business a felony. You don't even have to succeed - you just need to try to fuck people over. Also, it should be noted that harm does not need to be proved under this law. This was by design because the original architects of these antitrust laws recognized that prices could actually be lower because 1) they can afford to seek lower profit margins due to size/scale or that 2) these large companies can subsidize a business unit with a more profitable one to destroy competitors in the other. This is the tactic Amazon is using. Amazon has small profits margins when you look at the company as a whole. If you look at the retail business, which is what they are most famous for, they have staggering losses every quarter, usually to the tune of 15-20% for that massive business unit. If they didn't have their other business units they would be force to raise product prices and fees substantially just to break even, let alone profit. What Amazon is doing in this regard is supposedly illegal. Like blatantly, black-letter-law illegal - and has been for around 100 years. Yet no one is prosecuting them. That doesn't even touch upon the crap they do with sales taxes and determining nexus. And let's not forget that for anything Amazon sells on its own marketplace they won't face their marketplace fees, which usually are around 15%.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/15/2

"Every person who shall monopolize, or attempt to monopolize, or combine or conspire with any other person or persons, to monopolize any part of the trade or commerce among the several States, or with foreign nations, shall be deemed guilty of a felony, and, on conviction thereof, shall be punished by fine not exceeding $100,000,000 if a corporation, or, if any other person, $1,000,000, or by imprisonment not exceeding 10 years, or by both said punishments, in the discretion of the court."

And the term "person" includes both companies/entities as well as people. "The term “person” means a natural person or an organization." https://www.law.cornell.edu/definitions/uscode.php?width=840...

Send these pricks to jail.

Re: How did Google get so big?

#153

Post by GauntletWizard »

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…

Travel search engines used to be big business. They still are, but they're hurting, and not a small part of it is due to Google having a onebox of flight info. I personally love that onebox - I book all my flights through it - but I'd have a hard time explaining how it's not anticompetitive. Vertical integration can have some great efficiencies, but it can also destroy once healthy markets, and I only see that getting worse with modern supply chain management and similar technologies.

Re: How did Google get so big?

#154

Post by tEMporality7 »

grosjona wrote: post #116
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 conside…

I used to wonder why search engine companies care about which engine is the default in a browser because it only takes a few seconds to change it but now I know why. People are lazy :/

Re: How did Google get so big?

#155

Post by tylerhou »

nialv7 wrote: post #123
lern_too_spel wrote: post #100

Stoppelman's Yelp is a bad example. I don't want to visit a page that pesters me to install their app instead of showing me the reviews I came to read . If Yelp's ranking has been lowered, good riddance.

I don't really want to defend behaviors similar to Yelp's. Because it's indeed annoying. But let's play devil's advocate here. Part of the reason why Google can have a clear and good user experience, is because they can afford it. On the other hand, for smaller company, not meeting user count goals could mean not getting funding and die. This will force them to nag the users to get them to install the app, even if do…

Monopolies are bad because more capital means that you can create a better product?

If beating Google was as simple as needing more money to build a better product, then why couldn't startups just pitch that to investors and raise more funding? Probably because beating Google is harder than throwing money at a random startup's app.

At that rate you might as well outlaw venture capital funds because they disadvantage people trying to bootstrap their own startup.

There are certainly many reasons why monopolies are bad, but having capital is not one of them.

Re: How did Google get so big?

#156

Post by zjaffee »

ur-whale wrote: post #134
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…

>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. You're saying Google provided you with exactly the information you were looking for in the first place. And for free, btw. That clearly can't be allowed to stand.

Whats good for consumers isn't whats good for the broader market, we wouldn't see mega billionares with net worths close to that of previous captains of industry if we forced them to allow others to compete (where the only viable way to do so from my perspective is to not let them compete at all). In every other industry you see far less vertical integration due to the history of how companies have been regulated against (i.e. Car and airplane manufacturers are using very few of their own parts).

Re: How did Google get so big?

#157

Post by nostrademons »

grosjona wrote: post #116
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 conside…

Could also just use Tor Browser - it's Firefox modified for privacy, all running through Tor, with search defaulted to DDG. Actually works pretty well as a drop-in system, and you can't beat the privacy.

Ironically, my biggest complaint is the search - a number of queries that I'd expect to "just work" on Google, DDG really struggles with. There actually is a noticeable difference in quality between them.

Re: How did Google get so big?

#158

Post by zjaffee »

booleandilemma wrote: post #82
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…

Couldn’t people just stop using Google search though? There’s Bing, Duckduckgo, Ask.com (are they still around?)

The problem isn't google search as much as it is the fact that google search and their ad products allows them to promote their own products at a cost far less than their competitors.

Re: How did Google get so big?

#159

Post by samstave »

ransom1538 wrote: post #135

Ads. Previously to buy ads you had to call someone, get dinner with some weird guy, make tons of calls, get crappy click rates, trust the other companies 'reporting', pay for impression ads (wtf). It was a mess. You also had to do this with 23 DIFFERENT companies, which were all different . Google wasn't the first, but they did follow through and make a great way to advertise with self serve. Selling ads is awesome.…

I recall one of the questions in my interview at google years ago:

"Do you know what kind of company Google is?"

"Sure, everyone thinks you're a tech company or a search company or whatever - but Google is an advertising company, and thats it. All the other stuff distracts from the fact that youre just the most profitable ad company."

Re: How did Google get so big?

#160

Post by zjaffee »

briandear wrote: post #111
zjaffee wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

The need to break up monopolies isn't about the consumers as much as it is about having a competitive marketplace, where other businesses didn't have to struggle against googles ability to self promote itself. Markets work best when companies can compete on as close to equal terms as possible (which these days we only really see during the emergence of a new industry).
Post reply on HN