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Ask HN: Is Google a Monopoly or just really good at building useful products?

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Re: Ask HN: Is Google a Monopoly or just really good at building useful products?

#21

Post by Dahoon »

wpasc wrote: post #10
Dahoon wrote: post #5

>Is Google a monopoly? Yes in more than one area. The lowest hanging fruit (which will cause downvotes): Google Play. No one can release anything Google disagrees with on Google Play.... but google could. Google and Apple really should be separated from their stores. They know everything that happens on them and no one can compete against that. Bundling Chrome with Android (and Apple apps in iOS) is no different than…

Epic Games circumvented this pretty easily with Fortnite on Android

Yes, huge companies can make their own stores by levering a huge hit game, lots of cash and opening the gaping security hole that is sideloading apps. Firefox could also be downloaded from getfirefox.com. That doesn't mean Microsoft didn't abuse their monopoly with IE.

Btw. also the same Epic that paid a developer to pull their game off Steam and make it exclusive to the Epic store after the game had had lots of advertisement on the Steam store. That is twice Epic has abused one store to promote their own. They are even worse than Google. At least Google pretends not to be scummy.

But that is beside the point.

Re: Ask HN: Is Google a Monopoly or just really good at building useful products?

#22

Post by cm2012 »

wai1234 wrote: post #18

Why do you believe Google is "really good at building useful products"? Would you buy any of them if they didn't have the Google brand (or pay for any of the free ones for that matter)?

I would absolutely pay $150 a year easily for access to all google products. Gmail, docs, chrome, search are the key apps for me.

Re: Ask HN: Is Google a Monopoly or just really good at building useful products?

#23

Post by lfam »

wai1234 wrote: post #20
krm01 wrote: post #13

They have their share of failed products (see https://www.computerworlduk.com/galleries/it-vendors/google-... ) Their position allows them to distribute their products to a larger audience, quicker than others for sure, but I don’t believe that’s a formula for success per se. Successful products like Gmail, grew like a scrappy startup working on a great product would grow. The first version Paul made was just a searc…

You write about Gmail as if no one had email before that. GMail doesn't have a single meaningful feature that other clients didn't have before. And those clients didn't completely redo the UI every 3 months whether you want it or not.

In the beginning, when Gmail was only accessible by invitation, the killer feature was the relatively huge amount of free storage it offered. 1 gigabyte vs 20 or 100 megabytes at other providers.

Re: Ask HN: Is Google a Monopoly or just really good at building useful products?

#24

Post by ardy42 »

> I know that Google is super powerful and has great products but what exactly are (if any) examples of Google showing anti-competitive behaviour?

At least at one point, they nagged you incessantly to install Chrome when you used Google Search. I would attribute Chrome's current dominance [1] to that fact, and that fact alone. That's uncannily like the anti-competitive behavior Microsoft was judged to have used to push Internet Explorer into a dominant position and drive Netscape out of the market.

[1] If Chrome had been allowed to grow its market share organically, I think would have still been popular, just not dominant. Firefox would have a bigger market share than it does now, for instance.

Re: Ask HN: Is Google a Monopoly or just really good at building useful products?

#25

Post by pgeorgi »

wai1234 wrote: post #20
krm01 wrote: post #13

They have their share of failed products (see https://www.computerworlduk.com/galleries/it-vendors/google-... ) Their position allows them to distribute their products to a larger audience, quicker than others for sure, but I don’t believe that’s a formula for success per se. Successful products like Gmail, grew like a scrappy startup working on a great product would grow. The first version Paul made was just a searc…

You write about Gmail as if no one had email before that. GMail doesn't have a single meaningful feature that other clients didn't have before. And those clients didn't completely redo the UI every 3 months whether you want it or not.

> GMail doesn't have a single meaningful feature that other clients didn't have before.

I'd say that its search-first paradigm to mail handling (and related to that, labels) was rather unusual at the time, and for the most part it still is.

Disclosure: I work at Google and get my regular exposure to GMail from there. I run and use my own mail server for everything that is not work.

Re: Ask HN: Is Google a Monopoly or just really good at building useful products?

#26

Post by Dahoon »

pgeorgi wrote: post #19
Dahoon wrote: post #5

>Is Google a monopoly? Yes in more than one area. The lowest hanging fruit (which will cause downvotes): Google Play. No one can release anything Google disagrees with on Google Play.... but google could. Google and Apple really should be separated from their stores. They know everything that happens on them and no one can compete against that. Bundling Chrome with Android (and Apple apps in iOS) is no different than…

> No one can release anything Google disagrees with on Google Play Recent Android versions made it ever easier to install apps without using the Play Store: I have F-Droid installed and whitelisted (so no warnings every time an apk appears), which required toggling a permission switch the system pointed out to me. As for Chrome, apparently various vendors ship their own browser as default although it seems they still…

>Recent Android versions made it ever easier to install apps without using the Play Store

Yes I'm using it myself but how is that making Google Play less of a monopoly? F-droid can't sell apps on the play store without using Google.

Re: Ask HN: Is Google a Monopoly or just really good at building useful products?

#27

Post by killyp »

wai1234 wrote: post #18

Why do you believe Google is "really good at building useful products"? Would you buy any of them if they didn't have the Google brand (or pay for any of the free ones for that matter)?

10 years ago I certainly would have purchased Google Search, Google Maps, Chrome and Gmail. I currently pay for Android. Nowadays there are a lot more alternatives that have caught and surpassed some of these products. I have switched back to Firefox and am currently switching to ProtonMail but yes Google has made quite a few amazing products that for years had no competition.

Re: Ask HN: Is Google a Monopoly or just really good at building useful products?

#28

Post by thayne »

Regardless of whether they abuse their monopoly power or not, it is undeniable that Google is either a monopoly or member of an oligopoly in several areas, including: search, advertisement (adwords), email (gmail), cloud infrastructure (GCP), navigation (google maps), SaaS productivity suite (google docs), mobile operating systems (android), web browsers (chrome), etc.

Google certainly isn't as bad at abusing its monopoly power as it could be, but, well, it certainly isn't perfect either.

Re: Ask HN: Is Google a Monopoly or just really good at building useful products?

#29

Post by gojomo »

The "or" in the question is a false dichotomy. Many historic examples of monopolistic abuse originated from market power that was initially acquired via excellence in innovation or execution.

Also many anti-competitive behaviors, like certain pricing/tying/bundling/cross-subsidization strategies, are perfectly legal for a small operator, but become illegal when a firm gains immense market power. And there is rarely a "bright line" for when a firm crosses that threshold, and the things it used to do become illegal. The firm pretty much has to wait for pushback via prosecution – actual or threatened – and of course will keep denying there's anything wrong with their habitual practices indefinitely, as a matter of corporate culture.

Re: Ask HN: Is Google a Monopoly or just really good at building useful products?

#30

Post by eitland »

> I know that Google is super powerful and has great products

I'd say Google used to be a whole lot better.

> but what exactly are (if any) examples of Google showing anti-competitive behaviour?

Chrome:

- how they push it (massive advertising, bundling etc)

- how they use their massive web properties to make other browsers look bad

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