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Google is a monopoly – the fix isn't obvious

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Re: Google is a monopoly – the fix isn't obvious

#471

Post by shadowgovt »

MrDrMcCoy wrote: post #404
shadowgovt wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An unfortunate additional consequence of this antitrust lawsuit is that it is likely it will end The Google payments to Mozilla every year. That's 80% of the revenue, so the odds of them being a viable business afterwards are low. So I think we can cross that off the list as well and conclude that in the short to medium term, if Chrome went away it would mean simple web hegemony for Apple.

I'm a bit more hopeful about Mozilla. I think there would be a collapse of the business without the Google cash flow, but expect the browser itself would be continued by the community for its importance.

I have about as much faith in the open source community maintaining a machine as complicated as a full browser without significant corporate backing as I have in OpenOffice displacing Microsoft Office in my lifetime, but hope springs eternal.

Re: Google is a monopoly – the fix isn't obvious

#472

Post by danielmarkbruce »

randomdata wrote: post #463
danielmarkbruce wrote: post #462

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The person was referring to the user of search. You might think it's clever to point out that the person paying the bills is the ads user, but that's not what they meant, it's clear that's not what they meant, and the concerns about payments to apple to be the default search engine are related to search users.

And you might think it is clever to have no idea what is going on around you, but we are clearly talking about the customer, which was specifically asked about earlier in the thread.

> Typing bing.com takes 0.8 seconds and costs $0.

That's the discussion start. Sounding clever about "the actual customer" isn't clever, it's irrelevant. Advertisers just go where the eyeballs are, they are constantly using several different channels. There is a word for it because it's so common - omnichannel. There are companies like TradeDesk which exist to help customers manage because there are so many channels.

The relevant switching cost is the search user. It's 0.

Re: Google is a monopoly – the fix isn't obvious

#473

Post by throwaway48540 »

ossyrial wrote: post #337
missedthecue wrote: post #334

I think we need a better term than monopoly, that separates it from what people usually mean which is 'the best product'. I literally cannot think of any sort of product or service with lower switching costs than internet search. Typing bing.com takes 0.8 seconds and costs $0. Hundreds of orders of magnitude easier than switching to a different railroad if only one goes through your town. Google is a big ass company…

> Google is a big ass company and enjoys outsized market share because people choose to use it. If this were true, Google could make the immediate and easy decision to increase their annual profits by $26 billion , by simply stopping to pay browser vendors to make Google the default search engine. https://untested.sonnet.io/Defaults+Matter%2C+Don't+Assume+C...

Their need to buy advertising proves it is not a monopoly. If they were, they'd make that easy and profitable decision immediately.

Re: Google is a monopoly – the fix isn't obvious

#474

Post by parineum »

jemmyw wrote: post #441
missedthecue wrote: post #334

I think we need a better term than monopoly, that separates it from what people usually mean which is 'the best product'. I literally cannot think of any sort of product or service with lower switching costs than internet search. Typing bing.com takes 0.8 seconds and costs $0. Hundreds of orders of magnitude easier than switching to a different railroad if only one goes through your town. Google is a big ass company…

I read through some of the documents of the original complaint. This is mainly not about Google being the dominant search engine for consumers. It's more to do with their anti competitive behavior in the ad tech market. As a consumer, switching is easy. As a company that wants to advertise, switching is not easy if Google holds all the users. But also they've bought up all sides of the market, so what used to be comp…

I agree with you on the premise of the complaint but I think the parent's point still holds, the reason why you don't want to switch to another ad company is because all the people are with Google but they're with Google because they like it.

The judgment makes a lot of hay over google paying to be the default search engine and how google has all this data on how valuable default is and how much people don't tend to switch from them. That's all true but I'm not sure what the proposed solution is. Make it illegal to pay to be the default?

There has to be a default and I think the outcome there is that Google is still the default because people prefer it. Google only pays to be the default because, if they don't, someone else will. Google would love to not have to pay Apple to be the default.

I also notice the lack of acknowledgement that people actively do switch away from default browsers regularly, from their OS defaults, to Chrome, which defaults to Google Search. Bing's market share is basically entirely because Edge is the default browser in windows with Bing as the default search engine. "Solving" this default problem will probably crater Bing if it involves forcing a user to make a choice on install (or something similar).

The problem with talks of "splitting up Google" is that Google is an ad company, not a browser company, not a mobile phone company, not a search company, not an email company, etc. All of those other products exist to serve the ad company, they are loss leaders. Splitting up google is bad for consumers who use gmail, chrome, android and search.

The only real split that I think is possible is Google Ads from Google Cloud.

As far as the idea of Google's position being a drag on the economy, I'd like to see a competitor with a better model that Google used their market advantage to intentionally kill.

Re: Google is a monopoly – the fix isn't obvious

#475

Post by tracker1 »

dagmx wrote: post #413
sahila wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does your rationale explain Internet Explore/Edge and Safari which both have abundance of money and still can’t outcompete Chrome? This goes back to the original point about Google search being superior to Bing, and not just because it’s free.

Differing priorities. Edge is based on blink now anyway , so as a core browser engine they’re roughly the same. It’s the higher level UX that is differentiated. Safari has largely caught up now for web standards and mostly only lags behind in experimental features that are largely driven by Google anyway. But Safari has better battery use and privacy. Chrome is good because Google see it as their play at a web OS. Th…

The irony there is for a while, I considered Blink based Edge better than Chrome. The issue is they added what are basically a bunch of pre-installed extensions to Edge that I really hated and kept making the UX worse to me.

Honestly if there was a set of plugins that would sync my bookmarks toolbar links I'd have less issue switching browsers and trying others more.

Re: Google is a monopoly – the fix isn't obvious

#476

Post by b112 »

shadowgovt wrote: post #467
b112 wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one pays $0. All that slurping of user data is used by other corps to maximize their profits. They're paying for that data, and then believe they're making more from consumers as a result. But no matter what, the cost of collecting that data, the infra, and then corp x or y buying it, comes out of the bottom line. It's like points credit cards. Where does that cash back come from, magical fairies? It comes from re…

But there's an obvious difference between shelling out $60 up-front or $5 a month or whatever and shelling out $0 (and then being tracked, or having your data harvested). Especially in the modern ecosystem where costs have become divorced from income, people would (behavior observation strongly suggests) much rather pay with their information footprint (a resource they can't capitalize alone) than the dollars in thei…

But they aren't capitalizing their data, because they're paying more in the end. That's my point.

Let's say widgets are $x. Now the widget manufacturer, as their competitors are advertising, decides to advertise too. They just hit magazines. Success!

But then comes targeted advertising. Now they must pay for profiled advertising, which means that someone colllected the data, archived it, continues to track, and provides uptime and an api you can poll.

Google had 300 billion in gross revenue, what of facebook and others? And there are more nuanced, more targeted providers too.

The entire tracking industry has got to be hundreds of trillions in revenue, and guess where that comes from?

The cost of everything you buy.

So you get a browser and gmail for supposedly free, but now steak costs 3% more. What a savings.

And yes, when people are tricked into thinking a browser is free, it will be hard for visibly paid competitors.

People complain about global warming, and "how did we get here?". Well, the same way we have no paid for browsers. No one cares past their own nose.

Re: Google is a monopoly – the fix isn't obvious

#477

Post by randomdata »

danielmarkbruce wrote: post #472
randomdata wrote: post #463

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And you might think it is clever to have no idea what is going on around you, but we are clearly talking about the customer, which was specifically asked about earlier in the thread.

> Typing bing.com takes 0.8 seconds and costs $0. That's the discussion start. Sounding clever about "the actual customer" isn't clever, it's irrelevant. Advertisers just go where the eyeballs are, they are constantly using several different channels. There is a word for it because it's so common - omnichannel. There are companies like TradeDesk which exist to help customers manage because there are so many channels.…

This is the comment you were looking for:

"0. The transition to bing from google costs 0."

It was in reply to the question that asked the switching costs to the customer. One would have to be completely out-to-lunch to think that the cost is 0.

> The relevant switching cost is the search user. It's 0.

The search user has no relevance. Did you miss the context of monopolies? Monopoly literally requires economic trade, by very definition. The search user is not engaging in economic trade. They are is what is being traded. You even said that yourself, so why play dumb now?

Re: Google is a monopoly – the fix isn't obvious

#478

Post by danielmarkbruce »

randomdata wrote: post #477
danielmarkbruce wrote: post #472

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Typing bing.com takes 0.8 seconds and costs $0. That's the discussion start. Sounding clever about "the actual customer" isn't clever, it's irrelevant. Advertisers just go where the eyeballs are, they are constantly using several different channels. There is a word for it because it's so common - omnichannel. There are companies like TradeDesk which exist to help customers manage because there are so many channels.…

This is the comment you were looking for: "0. The transition to bing from google costs 0." It was in reply to the question that asked the switching costs to the customer. One would have to be completely out-to-lunch to think that the cost is 0. > The relevant switching cost is the search user. It's 0. The search user has no relevance. Did you miss the context of monopolies? Monopoly literally requires economic trade,…

No, it wasn't. I didn't start the discussion.

Read the case. One of the biggest complaints is the fees Google pay Apple. Made up definitions aren't relevant. Here is the ruling: https://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/legaldocs/gdpzmaxjxvw/...

Re: Google is a monopoly – the fix isn't obvious

#479

Post by avidiax »

throwaway48540 wrote: post #473
ossyrial wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google is a big ass company and enjoys outsized market share because people choose to use it. If this were true, Google could make the immediate and easy decision to increase their annual profits by $26 billion , by simply stopping to pay browser vendors to make Google the default search engine. https://untested.sonnet.io/Defaults+Matter%2C+Don't+Assume+C...

Their need to buy advertising proves it is not a monopoly. If they were, they'd make that easy and profitable decision immediately.

Google's payment to Apple isn't advertisement. It's to prevent Apple from rolling their own search engine, or selling the default to the next highest bidder.

Re: Google is a monopoly – the fix isn't obvious

#480

Post by randomdata »

danielmarkbruce wrote: post #478
randomdata wrote: post #477

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the comment you were looking for: "0. The transition to bing from google costs 0." It was in reply to the question that asked the switching costs to the customer. One would have to be completely out-to-lunch to think that the cost is 0. > The relevant switching cost is the search user. It's 0. The search user has no relevance. Did you miss the context of monopolies? Monopoly literally requires economic trade,…

No, it wasn't. I didn't start the discussion. Read the case. One of the biggest complaints is the fees Google pay Apple. Made up definitions aren't relevant. Here is the ruling: https://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/legaldocs/gdpzmaxjxvw/...

> No, it wasn't. I didn't start the discussion.

All the more reason for you to stick the topic that is already there. No need to double down on whatever out-to-lunch behaviour that came beforehand.

If you really want to talk about something else, why not start a new thread?

> One of the biggest complaints is the fees Google pay Apple.

Right, because that solidifies their position in the market. That spend provides a more compelling product (more eyeballs, as has been said), which is in no way realistically matched by would-be competition. Clearly monopolistic behaviour. But isn't about search users. Hell, the ruling you link to is literally about the impact on advertisers.

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