Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Google to mobile industry: 'F*** you very much'

theregister.co.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 99 posts

Re: Google to mobile industry: 'F*** you very much'

#31

Post by gaius »

btilly wrote: post #27
gaius wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

they aren't really cheating the consumers at all. If anything, they've been great to us The thing is this: the relationship that exists between me and T-mobile is, I pay them money and they provide me with voice and data and BlackBerry services. Now I'm obviously just one individual, but I am fairly representative of a high-value subset of T-mobile's customer base and as a collective, T-mobile's interests are well al…

Not exactly. The relationship you have with T-mobile is that they have signed you to a contract that locks you in to their service. At every turn T-mobile's goal is to lock you in, and once you're locked in they don't care about you. By contrast Google sets things up so that you can switch at any time, and they constantly have to keep you happy.

That's not really true, tho'. Come contract renewal time they are very accomodating. Or call them up and get through to Customer Retention and again, they'll bend over backwards.

But my point stands. T-mobile is interested in keeping me happy, over the long term. Google is interested in keeping its advertisers happy. Given the choice between you or I and them, it will always choose them. That's why it wants all your data, even if they don't sell it directly, it is to monetize it.

Re: Google to mobile industry: 'F*** you very much'

#32

Post by jnovek »

ytinas wrote: post #11
jambalaya wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Until the next Google?

Until now every company has had a weakness. Namely, dominance in some other market could be used to undercut them on price. The way to battle such companies has been to undermine their dominant market, or use the same strategy with a different market. Advertising is so unquantifiable at the moment that you can't undermine Google's market by simply selling advertising more cheaply. You could try to make a better searc…

Substitute Google with Microsoft and the products with MS products (say, Windows and Office) and you would have a common doomsday monopoly prediction ca. 1998. You can probably do the same with IBM before MS, but I'm too young to know.

20 years from now you'll wonder what you were so afraid of. Google is in its golden age, but it won't last forever.

Re: Google to mobile industry: 'F*** you very much'

#33

Post by gaius »

nihilocrat wrote: post #18
sethg wrote: post #15

Awww. Do the poor wittle cellphone manufacturers have their poor wittle feelings hurt? Here, have a blankie. Really, I’m having trouble seeing what the complaint is behind all the bombast. The author doesn’t claim that Google is selling the phones at a loss or doing anything else that would raise an antitrust issue. Carriers can offer the Nexus alongside other manufacturers’ Android phones and, for that matter, the t…

My first thoughts as well. It's about time someone with actual clout gave the mobile phone cartel the shaft. Yes, it's a cartel, when you pay $.50 a text message off your plan with all carriers there's gotta be some price fixing behind the scenes.

Yes but who really does that? Except when roaming. Even a basic plan will have like a thousand texts a month.

Re: Google to mobile industry: 'F*** you very much'

#34

Post by CalmQuiet »

ubernostrum wrote: post #28
SwellJoe wrote: post #9

Since we've all been screwed by the mobile industry for the entirety of its existence, I'm not sure how I'm supposed to feel indignant towards Google for pissing off said industry. There are very few industries more arrogant and abusive than the telcos (at least in the US; I dunno about the UK), and if Google wants to take their place, I'm all for it. Instead of playing the consumer-screwing game better (like Apple d…

So your argument, in a nutshell, is "two wrongs do indeed make a right"?

More like: Upgrading to two wrongs may - in this case - make a right (for consumers).

Re: Google to mobile industry: 'F*** you very much'

#35

Post by shareme »

You have to take this article with a large grain of salt as Google's obvious target was not non-US mobile telecoms but US telecoms

And obviously caught in the middle is OEMs who attempted to do Mobile Telecoms bidding..

The other obvious target is China Mobile to derail their Ophone initiative

Re: Google to mobile industry: 'F*** you very much'

#36

Post by kl4m »

gaius wrote: post #10
alexgartrell wrote: post #2

So, I'm kind of torn here. We're watching Google ascend to a position where they can bend numerous markets to their whim, but they aren't really cheating the consumers at all. If anything, they've been great to us. Beyond that, as a college kid with an interest in distributed systems/networks, I should probably be angling to try to work there someday. But still, I'm scared, because it's hard to trust a company that b…

they aren't really cheating the consumers at all. If anything, they've been great to us The thing is this: the relationship that exists between me and T-mobile is, I pay them money and they provide me with voice and data and BlackBerry services. Now I'm obviously just one individual, but I am fairly representative of a high-value subset of T-mobile's customer base and as a collective, T-mobile's interests are well al…

How is it really different? If Google don't get you to use and keep using their service, they lose you as a product to sell to their advertising clientele. Users are still indirectly their revenue source.

Re: Google to mobile industry: 'F*** you very much'

#37

Post by kl4m »

JadeNB wrote: post #25
rms wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that's true. Google's multi-class stock system makes them less subject to the immediate whims of the shareholders. Google's main strategy now is to make the internet better. Anything that improves the internet makes them more money. Cell phones are the internet. So if Google improves the cell phone marketplace, they make more money. Google taking advantage of a cell phone monopoly is unlikely if it take…

> Cell phones are the internet. What?

He means "Cell phones ∈ Internet"

Re: Google to mobile industry: 'F*** you very much'

#38

Post by scotty79 »

Other Android phones are to Nexus One as Firefox is to Chrome.

If Google does the same thing as you do it doesn't mean it doesn't love you anymore. It still will cooperate with you and it still will pay you. It just wants to try out some things but they don't want to force you to try it for them.

Re: Google to mobile industry: 'F*** you very much'

#39

Post by InclinedPlane »

gaius wrote: post #31
btilly wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not exactly. The relationship you have with T-mobile is that they have signed you to a contract that locks you in to their service. At every turn T-mobile's goal is to lock you in, and once you're locked in they don't care about you. By contrast Google sets things up so that you can switch at any time, and they constantly have to keep you happy.

That's not really true, tho'. Come contract renewal time they are very accomodating. Or call them up and get through to Customer Retention and again, they'll bend over backwards. But my point stands. T-mobile is interested in keeping me happy, over the long term. Google is interested in keeping its advertisers happy. Given the choice between you or I and them, it will always choose them. That's why it wants all your…

Well sure. They'll seem like they'll do anything for you. But if you look at the cold, hard numbers you'll realize that the average phone contract sums out to maybe $1-2k over its life, with a pretty hefty profit margin. Of course they're going to "bend over backwards" for you at contract time.

The used car salesman does the same thing. The rubes fall for the shtick nearly every time and the salesman laughs all the way to the bank.

Keep in mind that these are the same folks who markup a service that costs practically nothing to run to rates 4x higher than the cost of transmitting data from the Hubble space telescope.

Re: Google to mobile industry: 'F*** you very much'

#40

Post by orblivion »

btilly wrote: post #30
ubernostrum wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So your argument, in a nutshell, is "two wrongs do indeed make a right"?

I fail to see the second wrong. What did Google do? They built their own unlocked phone following the open reference platform that they helped create. And now they are trying to sell that phone on the open market. How is this wrong?

The article was sortof hard to understand, but it sounds like they're saying Google mislead them somehow about their (lack of) plans to enter the market in certain ways. I'd say that could amount to breach of (spoken) contract, depending on the circumstances.

Other than that, I agree nobody has any justification for being pissed off by somebody cutting into "their" business by being more efficient.

Post reply on HN