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How did Google get so big?

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Re: How did Google get so big?

#341

Post by notriddle »

stuckinarut wrote: post #233
briandear wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

> or forced to use inferior products? Potentially, yes. Google abuses their search monopoly and ads duopoly to kill off competition in other areas. They use their browser control to control internet standards. They do things like effectively kill RSS via EEE style tactics.

I agree with almost everything you said, except that RSS was never as popular as Twitter is now. Copying and pasting a URL is too technical, and Live Bookmarks were the wrong UX all around. Mailing lists are still more popular than RSS ever was.

In retrospect, if Firefox had used a New Tab Page with an RSS driven feed like what they do with Pocket now, we'd probably still be using it today. Too bad 2005 Mozilla didn't have UX designers calling the shots.

Re: How did Google get so big?

#342

Post by sseth »

Let's ask a question : How did Google defeat another giant - Microsoft - in 2 major markets where Microsoft had a head start and deep pockets? How did Chrome beat IE, and how did Android beat the several generations of Windows Mobile and Windows Phone?

Clearly Microsoft had no dearth of talent or money. So how come it could not keep Google at bay? In my view the answer lies in the fact that Google's engineering led culture meant they could follow a release cadence that is unheard of for such large systems. Chrome was releasing every 6 weeks, and Android every 3-6 months or so in the early days. Meanwhile we had 1.5 - 2 years between each Windows Phone release.

When Chrome started, IE had nearly 70% market share and the benefit of being deployed on nearly every computer on earth. Microsoft was in the mobile phone market from 2000. In 2011, IDC predicted Windows Phone would overtake the iPhone. Both Google and Microsoft were taken aback by the iPhone, but Google was able to turn on a dime, Microsoft was not. Google achievement has been to stay agile even as it grew big - in my view this remains the secret to their success.

Re: How did Google get so big?

#343

Post by mrep »

samstave wrote: post #159
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."

> "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."

That is pretty much the most anti-google culture perspective statement you could have said. If there was ever an argument for culture fit, this is it.

Re: How did Google get so big?

#344

Post by euyyn »

dredmorbius wrote: post #274
euyyn wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why wouldn't it be?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unintended_consequences http://newtechnologyandsociety.org

That's kind of a poor reply. "Sometimes things have unintended consequences". And a link to a book that says that technology alone won't save the environment, more things will be needed.

Re: How did Google get so big?

#345

Post by starchild_3001 »

sseth wrote: post #342

Let's ask a question : How did Google defeat another giant - Microsoft - in 2 major markets where Microsoft had a head start and deep pockets? How did Chrome beat IE, and how did Android beat the several generations of Windows Mobile and Windows Phone? Clearly Microsoft had no dearth of talent or money. So how come it could not keep Google at bay? In my view the answer lies in the fact that Google's engineering led c…

Good points. I still find Google pretty agile and aggressive.

Re: How did Google get so big?

#347

Post by SllX »

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 :/

It gets worse. I remember I had a friend that had a piece of spyware that set his default search engine to something else. At first glance I didn't realize it was a piece of spyware because all his searches looked like normal searches, albeit on a generic looking page.

I wondered why he didn't switch to Google or something else at the time and it used to annoy me whenever I was using his desktop for anything. Then I took a look into it and found out that he actually couldn't set his default search engine through his browser anymore, in Firefox or Chrome actually.

It was a browser extension. For that entire time there was a piece of spyware on his computer probably watching all of his browsing that he probably could have figured out about himself, if he wasn't too lazy to just switch his search engine. Once I looked into it, it took all of five minutes (if that) to figure out what was happening and remove the problem, and he's not exactly tech illiterate. He literally just didn't care or want to take the time to switch his search engine.

That's a data point. Just one, anecdotal data point, but take it how you will.

Re: How did Google get so big?

#348

Post by sseth »

starchild_3001 wrote: post #345
sseth wrote: post #342

Let's ask a question : How did Google defeat another giant - Microsoft - in 2 major markets where Microsoft had a head start and deep pockets? How did Chrome beat IE, and how did Android beat the several generations of Windows Mobile and Windows Phone? Clearly Microsoft had no dearth of talent or money. So how come it could not keep Google at bay? In my view the answer lies in the fact that Google's engineering led c…

Good points. I still find Google pretty agile and aggressive.

It is also good to ask why Google could not succeed at social media. Perhaps network effects and an equally agile competitor were a big enough moat for Facebook to fight off Google successfully.

To say that abuse of monopoly is what has enabled Google to grow big is too simplistic. They have succeeded brilliantly in areas where they had equally big competitors, and failed spectacularly as well in others - social media being the most prominent. But more tech focused readers will recall Wave, or NaCl. Then are cases where we have a stalemate for example G Suite, where Microsoft still holds it own with Office.

Google Cloud is a strange case where one can argue that Google has failed to leverage many of its own innovations in containers and other data center infrastructure to achieve a dominant position. I would argue this is a case where Google should have been a market leader and much like Microsoft in the 2000's has frittered away a natural advantage.

Re: How did Google get so big?

#349

Post by mrep »

adventured wrote: post #317
seabrookmx wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Universally the high profit, small share player I'm curious though, was this always supposed to be the case? I think Apple has adapted amazingly well to the market (look at their profits) but I don't think there's any evidence that this has been a holistic, from the start business strategy for them. I know my Elementary and High schools had Macs because of Apple's aggressive Educational discounts, and at the time i…

I doubt that was their original intention. However I do think it's an inherent consequence to what they do (building and controlling their own ecosystem top to bottom, not licensing the OS, staying in the higher price tiers, etc). Steve Jobs basically admitted the Apple approach only works in that model. In the 2007 Jobs / Gates discussion at D5 [1]. He pointed out that the whole thing only works because of PC guy (t…

> The best thing that ever happened to Apple, was Google buying and building up Android as the 85% market player. Jobs should have been thanking them every day for that perceived betrayal. The ideal was always to have another PC guy scenario to play off of. You want tons of shitty Android phones out there in the market to compete against. Let them have the worthless bottom ~50% of the market financially, where there's zero profit to be had and lots of mediocre consumer experiences.

With the EU fining Google 5 Billion dollars for essentially bundling search to google play in order to make some money off of all the money Google spent on android, the EU has shown that the Apple model is the only real way to go.

IOS is way more restrictive than android and they can get away with it because they only make expensive devices that only a subset of people can pay for thus isolating themselves from antitrust arguments.

Re: How did Google get so big?

#350

Post by TomMarius »

lovich wrote: post #256
TomMarius wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are they getting hurt? I guess not. No one has any right to Google services[0]. Google has every right to refuse service to anyone[0]. What if they decided to close shop altogether? Note that locking them e.g. out of a phone they bought before the ban is something different - that would be a breach of contract from Google side. [0] unless there is an existing contract

When a company has an almost complete monopoly and they decide to bar someone from service, how is that not hurting them? If you run a website that earns revenue based on incoming users and Google cuts you off, how is that not damaging you? You could use every single competitor and still not even get a quarter as much traffic as Google.

Hurting and damaging as in violence.

What if Google closed shop? Would you force them to reopen again? What if Google never existed?

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