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How did Google get so big?

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Re: How did Google get so big?

#211

Post by xg15 »

fixermark wrote: post #74
xg15 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Quick experiment you can try to check if Google is blocking competition: 1) navigate to bing.com 2) do a search If it works, congratulations; Google isn't blocking competition. The 98% market share is probably because the market is winner-take-all, and people don't see a need to use a new competitor that's even equivalently-effective over one they are already comfortable with.

Imagine you run a website. Some day, for whatever reason, Google is blacklisting you. Are you going to say "eh, no big deal, I'll just have my customers use Bing instead"?

Re: How did Google get so big?

#212

Post by stuckinarut »

ebikelaw wrote: post #86
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…

That doesn't provide a perfect answer. Sanjay and Jeff (and a lot of other senior Googlers) were all at DEC. Why didn't DEC succeed to the degree that Google has?

They also had Dave Cutler and loads of other high profile people over the years.

Dozens have companies have benefited from the diaspora of DEC, and now Sun.

Re: How did Google get so big?

#213

Post by simias »

magicalhippo wrote: post #180
grosjona wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

For me it's because with Google I don't need to go to page 5 to find interesting results. I've tried to use DuckDuckGo several times, each time I've quickly found myself trawling page after page of results, reverted to Google and found the stuff I was after on page one.

That used to be true for me but I've used ddg as my main search engine for a couple of years and I find myself using "!g" less and less. Actually you made me realize that I haven't used it in a while, probably weeks (and I've had a very busy couple of weeks with tons of opportunities to look for stuff online).

It's not because duckduckgo finds everything I want, it's because I've noticed that when ddg doesn't find something usually google doesn't either. Also whenever I end up on google now (generally because I forgot to change the search engine after a fresh install) I find the website cluttered which is a shame because it used to be in Google's DNA to keep the search page simple.

For instance I just made a completely random search on Google just to see what it would look like: https://svkt.org/~simias/up/20180727-235325_tou.png

What the hell is all of that stuff? If I wanted to browse the stock exchange or google maps I would. "People also search for" well good for them I guess.

Re: How did Google get so big?

#214

Post by HillaryBriss »

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'm not a fan of Yelp's business practices or strategic web decisions, yet, i think Stoppelman may have a point even if Yelp is guilty of the same type of shady practices itself.

IOW, just like i wonder if i'm missing an excellent restaurant when i search for restaurants in Yelp, i also wonder if i'm missing an excellent review website when i search for "restaurant reviews" on Google.

Re: How did Google get so big?

#215

Post by samstave »

fjsolwmv wrote: post #194
samstave wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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."

Did you get hired?

I went through a three month-long interview process with them... then they said I did very well and they would be extending me an offer.

THen next day, they called and said I would not receive an offer and would not give a reason.

THey invited me to interview for that position multiple times over the next couple of years and I finally had to ask them to stop recruiting me for that position... they stopped. :-(

Re: How did Google get so big?

#216

Post by stuckinarut »

fixermark wrote: post #48
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.

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

I don't think it can be considered an open question if we're all just waiting for the inevitable disaster.

The problem is we're just being slowly boiled so nothing has been done to stop the complete perversion of democracy and slide into a corporate oligarchy.

Re: How did Google get so big?

#217

Post by stuckinarut »

nine_k wrote: post #114
chargingmylaser wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Gee, that sounds familiar.

I guess it's totally different because google only uses their duopoly position in ads to finance everything else.

Re: How did Google get so big?

#218

Post by stuckinarut »

HillaryBriss wrote: post #203
eftychis wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

> If you don't like their price or approach too bad for you. You are kept out of the game yes, basically true, i think. the article says Google spent more money on lobbying last year than any other corporation... why does Google think that spending money in this way is useful? what does Google get in return? how does Google explain to shareholders that this is not a waste?

Are those rhetorical questions cause it seems liek the answer is pretty obvious in this context.

Re: How did Google get so big?

#219

Post by xg15 »

TomMarius wrote: post #90
xg15 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Your product" is something completely different if you're a mom-and-pop shop or startup or if you have 90% market share. This is why antitrust exists and what arguments like this always seem to ignore.

Can you be more specific, what exactly is and when exactly it becomes different?

In short, network effects. Longer: the amount of power their decisions have to affect society. If the mom-and-pop shop would refuse to serve readheads, that's (mostly) their decision. If Google decided to lock redheads out of their accounts, or block from using Chrome, Android or Search, those people would have serious disadvantages simply going around their daily life.

Re: How did Google get so big?

#220

Post by stuckinarut »

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…

In the US that's true. It's a really awful system.
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