How did Google get so big? • Hacker News Board

Re: How did Google get so big?

#371

Post by cncrnd » Sat, Jul 28, 2018, 8:22 AM UTC

Here is my 2 cents.

On HN people are always complaining that google services are unreliable because google shuts down a lot of stuff.

Well I think that's because they try a lot of things too. It's really amazing how they have managed to excel in lots of places. Maps, Office/GSuite, Email, Cloud, Chrome, Android, Waymo, Search...all of these are companies on their own.

Google manages to innovate by trying a lot of things and shutting down what doesn't work. It's like a startup incubator, and perhaps it motivates employees with the potential for big bonuses upon success just like a startup does.

Re: How did Google get so big?

#372

Post by xg15 » Sat, Jul 28, 2018, 10:04 AM UTC

TomMarius wrote: post #350

lovich wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

If this is supposed to lead to the NAP, physical violence is not the only way a person's agency can be restricted or living quality can be reduced. (What I would define as "hurt" here)

Re: How did Google get so big?

#373

Post by stuckinarut » Sat, Jul 28, 2018, 10:13 AM UTC

TomMarius wrote: post #243

stuckinarut wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except google dominates search and search is the only way. This is like if one company owned the street signs, and just took them down arbitrarily.

You are free to use duckduckgo.com, bing.com or several more alternatives. Your metaphor is invalid.

right.

I'm gonna stretch my metaphor a lot.

Imagine street signs use polarized glasses (or something, I'm not an optics). I can see only those signs whose glasses I where.

I choose to wear google glasses. Everyone does, the competition is pretty good but google has been around for so long that I just don't really bother with anything else.

Now google takes down some signs. Am I really going to carry 3 pairs of glasses (N pairs, M are relevant) in order to figure out what street I'm on? or am I just going to walk a block to the next street and use the service google hasn't arbitrarily decided to destroy.

Re: How did Google get so big?

#374

Post by paganel » Sat, Jul 28, 2018, 10:15 AM UTC

mrep wrote: post #332

dmead wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"And now their team's attention is on AI..." is quite the hype thing to say. Just because you can build a bigger bridge doesn't mean you're a good car designer.

> "And now their team's attention is on AI..." is quite the hype thing to say. Googles AI blows every other companies out of the water. > Just because you can build a bigger bridge doesn't mean you're a good car designer. What? How is that analogous?

> Googles AI blows every other companies out of the water.

That is certainly true, but that could also mean that Google will be the first company to hit certain unsurpassable road-blocks. Just look at Google Translate, which IMO hasn’t qualitatively improved for the better for at least 2 years now, even though most probably the data on which it is based is at least an order of magnitude “bigger”. The same might also happen to autonomous driving.

Re: How did Google get so big?

#375

Post by xg15 » Sat, Jul 28, 2018, 10:16 AM UTC

TomMarius wrote: post #47

lovich wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They routinely put their other products on top of the search pages, such as Google reviews over Yelp or Google maps over OpenMap results. The issue isn't even so much as Google is dominating search, because they have been providing a better product in almost all cases until recently. The issue is that they are using their dominance in search to try and dominate other markets

It's their product after all; do you point people to your competition from your product? Everyone is free to use anything else. Anti-competitive would be if you couldn't use anything else.

So, genuine question. If some company (with sufficiently deep pockets) decided to buy up all land, buildings, roads, infrastructure, etc that makes up a city and then decided that certain groups of persons are no longer allowed to tresspass its private property and must therefore leave the city, would you be ok with that?

Re: How did Google get so big?

#376

Post by stuckinarut » Sat, Jul 28, 2018, 10:17 AM UTC

fixermark wrote: post #298

stuckinarut wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They pay to integrate with third party services via a bidding process. > adds significant risk that the third-party changes their API, changes their feature-set in an incompatible way, goes out of business All very unlikely to happen when dealing with a client the size of google. > It's both cheaper and more convenient for the end-user if the search provider handles the mapping itself added bonus, google gets to domi…

> They pay to integrate with third party services via a bidding process. It's an interesting idea; I don't think I've seen something like that floated before outside of the government space of fair bidding against contracts. > added bonus, google gets to dominate mapping then jack up the cost 30x when they decide they want it to be a billion dollar business. LIke they did recently. I hear OpenStreetMaps still exists,…

An API not suitable for commercial use. So now you're relying on a third party who is suddenly trying to cope with some percentage of the insane traffic of google maps. If they can they make a lot of money.

if not you lose money by switching to them. if it's less than the new rate that you get from google, it's a hard sell to switch. You might point out that this third party should spend the money to scale, but unlike google they aren't equipped with an advertising firehose of cash that they can point at a losing business whenever they want. They have to operate a scale they can afford. Best case they have the staff to build out a service that they can scale quickly enough to take advantage. Realistically, that means using a cloud service provided by one of the oligarchs.

Re: How did Google get so big?

#377

Post by stuckinarut » Sat, Jul 28, 2018, 10:17 AM UTC

jhall1468 wrote: post #264

stuckinarut wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Do you have any examples of these things taking place in reality or is it just "possible" stuff. And Google did not kill RSS lol, it was always super niche.

and yet the users of RSS continue to lament the loss of Google reader.

Re: How did Google get so big?

#378

Post by stuckinarut » Sat, Jul 28, 2018, 10:18 AM UTC

ur-whale wrote: post #251

stuckinarut wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why would that be a good thing? Or rather, a better thing than the current situation? Why would that even be desirable? Because wealth inequality is massively harmful for society. It's the sort of thing that leads to revolution. > 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. and then Goo…

> Because wealth inequality is massively harmful for society. Nope. Hunger, poverty, lack of education, lack of access to medical care, etc.. is harmful to society and leads to revolutions and whatever root cause leads to those is to be fought against. Except that wealth inequality isn't such a root cause. Wealth inequality isn't and has never been a problem except in the minds of utopian ideologues, collectivists or…

> Wealth inequality isn't and has never been a problem except in the minds of utopian ideologues, collectivists or people with a basic jealousy problem

"Let them eat cake"

Re: How did Google get so big?

#379

Post by stuckinarut » Sat, Jul 28, 2018, 10:20 AM UTC

ur-whale wrote: post #247

stuckinarut wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the US that's true. It's a really awful system.

Also the place where something like Google - massively useful to the whole world - was born. Awful indeed.

and was allowed to grow into a behemoth capable of perverting democracy and engaging in essentially any behaviour it desires, from a business standpoint.

Re: How did Google get so big?

#380

Post by Spooky23 » Sat, Jul 28, 2018, 10:26 AM UTC

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…

These items have nothing to do with engineering ability and everything to do with inept leadership at Microsoft.

Google had better leadership and easier choices. They had no prexisting customers or partners to annoy.

Companies get wacky like this on top. Think about a certain computer company shippping defective laptops for years to avoid disruption of the product schedule. :)