How did Google get so big? • Hacker News Board

Re: How did Google get so big?

#181

Post by pm90 » Fri, Jul 27, 2018, 9:07 PM UTC

nialv7 wrote: post #123

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 don't really want to defend behaviors similar to Yelp's. Because it's indeed annoying. But let's play devil's advocate here. Part of the reason why Google can have a clear and good user experience, is because they can afford it. On the other hand, for smaller company, not meeting user count goals could mean not getting funding and die. This will force them to nag the users to get them to install the app, even if do…

> I don't really want to defend behaviors similar to Yelp's. Because it's indeed annoying. But let's play devil's advocate here.

> Part of the reason why Google can have a clear and good user experience, is because they can afford it. On the other hand, for smaller company, not meeting user count goals could mean not getting funding and die. This will force them to nag the users to get them to install the app, even if doing that could annoy some of the users.

They don't have to do that. They can use the same tracking resources that other online companies use to show increased usage.

I'm not saying that I have a better solution. But their current solution is sub-optimal. Their website is crap, looks outdated. What are they even working on?

Re: How did Google get so big?

#182

Post by HillaryBriss » Fri, Jul 27, 2018, 9:08 PM UTC

>Google is worth more than three-quarters of a trillion dollars right now and you don't get that big by accident.

why did CBS News bother to say this? pretty much no one has ever believed a company gets that big by accident.

Re: How did Google get so big?

#183

Post by cma » Fri, Jul 27, 2018, 9:09 PM UTC

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…

If that happened Google would probably ban Android phones that use Google apps from using third party browsers (like they already did for third party search providers). Then your tabs wouldn't be able to sync with mobile.

Re: How did Google get so big?

#184

Post by andbberger » Fri, Jul 27, 2018, 9:10 PM UTC

turc1656 wrote: post #152

wilsonnb2 wrote: post #6

So if Google is a monopoly, what should be done about it? Split it up into separate, competing mini-Googles? Keep fining them more and more money until they stop anti-competitive practices? Split off Maps/Android/Drive/etc into separate companies so that Google can't use their search monopoly to dominate those fields? I'm genuinely not sure what the best way to go about this would be.

It's not complicated. But for some reason everyone misses the obvious. You go after the people responsible for taking these actions, not the "company" itself as an ethereal creation. If someone (or multiple people, as here) are in violation of Title 15, they are committing felonies according to the law. These felonies happen to be punishable by up to 10 years in prison, in addition to steep fines. However, the fines…

You've got it backwards, and I find that way of thinking quite dangerous.

You have to go to the root of the problem to solve it, and the root is that corps are fundamentally driven towards monopolistic practices by competition. If it's legal, and it improves the bottom line corps __have__ to do it. Not should or will, __have__ to. Because if they don't someone else will and they'll die.

Need to treat corps like the organisms that they are. More than the sum of their parts, and with their own agency.

Re: How did Google get so big?

#185

Post by mirimir » Fri, Jul 27, 2018, 9:13 PM UTC

ChristianBundy wrote: post #177

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.…

I use (and love) Searx. It has two features: - many search engines are used at once - searches are proxied through a third-party provider For example, if you type "ipv6" into searx.me you'll get results from Google, Bing, Wikipedia, Stack Overflow, and dozens of other sites. It's not perfect privacy, but I generally get better results than using only one search engine and there's a small boost to privacy. The only th…

Cool!

And that reminds me. I had forgotten MetaCrawler. As I recall, that was my favorite between AltaVista and Google.

Re: How did Google get so big?

#186

Post by bps4484 » Fri, Jul 27, 2018, 9:18 PM UTC

tinbad wrote: post #17

"Some were investigated, but only superficially, the government just really isn't enforcing our antitrust laws. And that's what's happened. None of these acquisitions have been challenged." Behemoths like Google emerge every time new inventions lead to the creation of new markets followed by mass adoption during a relatively short timeframe, when regulations don't exist yet. It has happened in history time and time a…

I think it is also worth calling out that at least 2 of those acquisitions, android and google, were made before they became as dominant as they are today. Android was purchased by google 2 years before it even launched, and while youtube was explosively popular at the time of purchase, many at the time thought the 1B purchase price for a revenue-less company was a stupid decision, and nobody was concerned about a monopoly. In other words, the businesses, and their dominance in those business, were made well after the acquisition such that I don't think if they had been investigated rigorously by the FTC they would have been stopped.

I'm not sure if the same was also true for doubleclick (I don't know enough about ad tech).

Re: How did Google get so big?

#187

Post by ghein » Fri, Jul 27, 2018, 9:19 PM UTC

TimJYoung wrote: post #87

I've been trying to reconcile the libertarian perspective on this topic with my more-liberal leanings, and I've got to say that I'm perplexed. Can any libertarians here share their thoughts on the role of government in producing tech monopolies ? Is there any role at all ? IOW, would we see the same problem if there were still private AOL, CompuServe, and Prodigy networks instead of just the one Internet ? And yes, I…

Do you believe in free speech? Do you believe in free choice? Do you think that individuals in a city/state/country should be able to talk to others in a different city/state/country?

Is the Great Firewall of China a good thing or deeply evil?

Anyone is free (outside China and a few other places) can install their favorite version of Linux, use Opera/Firefox/whatever, use protonmail, search on duckduckgo.

Why should the government FORCE people to use a different source of information than the one that they prefer?

Advertisers are leaving local monopolists/oligopolists (local TV stations, newspapers, cable, yellow pages) and choosing a different, cheaper, more effective, and more flexible option to reach customers. Producers and consumers were very badly served by these old incumbents, why should the government step in to protect those old and malevolent businesses?

It's the same thing as Uber vs Taxis. Taxis are racist, expensive, government enforced oligopolies that exploit the drivers, have bad service, don't want to take credit cards (don't even mention Apple/Google/Samsung/AliPay), and aren't available when you really need one. Do you prefer app enabled car service or the old style Taxi, like the ones using terrorism in Barcelona to protect their monopoly?

We have an information commons with infinite choice and network effects. Same as with language. If you're comfortable using criminal law to require individuals to speak a certain language in private, then sure government should control what companies and products people can choose to engage with. The New York Times, Cox, Bertelsmann, and Reed-Elsevier would love that, along with Xi Jinping. Just realize that you are consciously strengthening old corrupt oligopolies and annihilating free speech and freedom of choice.

Re: How did Google get so big?

#188

Post by yellowcherry » Fri, Jul 27, 2018, 9:19 PM UTC

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.

I have exactly the opposite experience, time after time after time.

The one area where Google search provides me with a notably better experience is in image search.

Re: How did Google get so big?

#189

Post by CobrastanJorji » Fri, Jul 27, 2018, 9:20 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.…

> > [Google] denied it was a monopoly in search or search advertising, citing many competitors including Amazon and Facebook.

> That's a joke, right?

I don't think they're joking. There are a lot of people, whole countries of them, for whom Facebook is literally the whole of the Internet.

Re: How did Google get so big?

#190

Post by monkeydust » Fri, Jul 27, 2018, 9:23 PM UTC

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.

100% same I wanted to love ddg but it's just not as good