How did Google get so big?

Post by dredmorbius » Fri, Jul 27, 2018, 11:03 PM UTC

smileysteve wrote: post #169

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…

You know you can change where the browser bar searches; In chrome, in Safari, and in Firefox, and Edge.

Post by dredmorbius » Fri, Jul 27, 2018, 11:11 PM UTC

btilly wrote: post #269

nostrademons wrote: post #122

On the market end - Google got huge because they inserted themselves as a critical part of peoples' usage of a resource that got even huger. As late as 2013, my coworkers and I would mock the Wall Street analysts who covered Google because (you could tell from their questions on the earnings call) they assumed that the Internet was no longer growing. So all the focus was on CPCs and Google's ability to monetize, when…

This was one of the points made in http://www.dtc.umn.edu/~odlyzko/doc/metcalfe.pdf about why people find Metcalfe's law compelling despite the numerical evidence against it. Our personal perception of the size of a network is directly proportional to the value that we get from it. Extrapolating from that we estimate a square law. However we are neither aware of nor directly value the long tail of people distant from…

Post by quadrangle » Fri, Jul 27, 2018, 11:17 PM UTC

mirimir wrote: post #109

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.…

Post by still_grokking » Fri, Jul 27, 2018, 11:22 PM UTC

tEMporality7 wrote: post #154

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…

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 :/

Post by deklerk » Fri, Jul 27, 2018, 11:31 PM UTC

nine_k wrote: post #107

deklerk wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 natu…