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How did Google get so big?

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Re: How did Google get so big?

#161

Post by ur-whale »

zjaffee wrote: post #146
bepotts wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. I really don't understand why people try and muddy the waters around Google products. I'm not forced to use Google; Google products are just damn good. Having a monopoly in a market due to the fact that your product is just that good isn't a bad thing, and punishing companies for being successful sets an awful precedent (which is why breaking up Google isn't going to happen). From search, maps, email, YouTub…

Why are their products that good? What is it that makes content creators publish on youtube rather than on other platforms. I'd argue that a huge part of this is the fact that youtube gives creators more visibility than other places, and since google is able to leverage search in addition to their advertising business to bring more eyes to youtube is the reason for the platforms success. I think your confusing google…

>Namely, the equity value of google would be more balanced with other smaller firms, and in turn we'd see more very rich people rather than fewer people with net worths well over 10 billion.

Why would that be a good thing? Or rather, a better thing than the current situation? Why would that even be desirable?

Again, antitrust laws exist for one reason: to protect consumers. Not to implement someone's idea of an ideal society or market.

If you believe e.g. that company equity should be more uniformly distributed, go talk to your congressman, have him draft a law to that effect and get congress to vote on it.

Re: How did Google get so big?

#162

Post by zjaffee »

GauntletWizard wrote: post #153
tills13 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 gettin…

Are travel search engines hurting? priceline's stock is higher than ever?

This said, I agree with you on everything else you've said.

Re: How did Google get so big?

#163

Post by Yhippa »

Does anybody else here remember the late 90's when you had to try multiple search engines to get something close to what you were looking for? Google has largely solved that problem and are (IMO rightfully) rewarded for it.

I really like Google and their products. They simply make my life easier. I will admit it would be interesting to see what would happen if search was split up: would that tech improve at a faster pace than it does now? Or would we end up back in the late 90's?

Re: How did Google get so big?

#164

Post by nostrademons »

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.…

Hard to argue for this when ISPs themselves are not regulated as a utility, even though you must have an ISP to use Google, in many municipalities they are just as much of a monopoly as Google, and they have engaged in even more anticompetitive tactics than Google.

If you want to regulate the whole Internet infrastructure - from device to ISP to web browser to search engine - as a utility you might have more of a case, but that gets a lot more complicated.

Re: How did Google get so big?

#165

Post by buboard »

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.…

Google didn't invent online ads, not even the auctioned ones. Also, their innovations in the online ad space were generally limited to their search-based ad business.

Re: How did Google get so big?

#166

Post by tylerhou »

zjaffee wrote: post #146
bepotts wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. I really don't understand why people try and muddy the waters around Google products. I'm not forced to use Google; Google products are just damn good. Having a monopoly in a market due to the fact that your product is just that good isn't a bad thing, and punishing companies for being successful sets an awful precedent (which is why breaking up Google isn't going to happen). From search, maps, email, YouTub…

Why are their products that good? What is it that makes content creators publish on youtube rather than on other platforms. I'd argue that a huge part of this is the fact that youtube gives creators more visibility than other places, and since google is able to leverage search in addition to their advertising business to bring more eyes to youtube is the reason for the platforms success. I think your confusing google…

There are Google products which are inferior compared to their competitors, and usage rates show that as well: YouTube Gaming/YT livestreaming are basically platforms that only host people banned from Twitch.

Re: How did Google get so big?

#167

Post by ghein »

nouveaux wrote: post #32
fipple wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's Android, YouTube, 510 Systems, and the constellation of acquisitions made to create Google Apps, at a minimum.

When YouTube and Android was first launched, Google was not nearly as big as it is today. There were even questions about Google's viability back then given that most of their revenue came from online advertising. It would be interesting to see how many of these acquisitions are still around. I think survivorship bias is strong here.

There's just no way Android's acquisition would or could have been stopped.

Google bought it in July 05, one year after IPO. The smartest phones available were the Blackberry 7750, Motorola Q, and Palm Treo. Google had $3B in revenue in 04 and was on its way to $6B in revenue in 05 when it spent $50MM on Android.

There was no way this acquisition would have been blocked without clairvoyance. Even then "stop this $3B company from buying a startup because it's going to destroy a $35B company in 9 years" is not exactly a compelling argument.

The argument is even more nonsensical than that against Facebook's Instagram acquisition, which is saying something. People argue that DOJ or FTC should have stopped a company that hadn't yet IPOd from buying a company that had raised $7MM (and would raise $50MM a few days before the facebook acquisition).

Sure they're obviously huge in retrospect but they really weren't at the time. Interesting and hot companies die all the time: YikYak and Secret looked like they were going to take over the world at one point.

Re: How did Google get so big?

#168

Post by hk__2 »

tonysdg wrote: post #136
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…

Out of curiosity, what prevents you from using Firefox? It allows you to specify a default search engine -- which you can set directly to DDG.

> Out of curiosity, what prevents you from using Firefox? It allows you to specify a default search engine -- which you can set directly to DDG.

Chrome allows you as well.

Re: How did Google get so big?

#169

Post by smileysteve »

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…

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

Re: How did Google get so big?

#170

Post by arminiusreturns »

dcow wrote: post #139
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 use FF and DuckDuckGo. It's super easy.

I also heavily use the cli ddg search. Might try that out for anyone else who lives in the terminal.
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