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How did Google get so big?

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Re: How did Google get so big?

#91

Post by tobias3 »

avar wrote: post #20
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.

> Keep fining them more and more money > until they stop anti-competitive practices? I believe you're referring to the EU's fines against Google here. In that case that's pretty much the only weapon the EU has. They can ultimately deny Google market access to the EU, and argue that case at the WTO, or seize Google's assets in the EU, but they can't decide to split up a US-based legal entity.

The EU also cannot prevent Google from buying US startups, furthering they monopoly position. And US startups get more funding because they might be bought by Google.

Re: How did Google get so big?

#92

Post by dilyevsky »

ebikelaw wrote: post #86
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…

That doesn't provide a perfect answer. Sanjay and Jeff (and a lot of other senior Googlers) were all at DEC. Why didn't DEC succeed to the degree that Google has?

Because they didn’t have Craig Silverstein and many many others. Lets not pretend Jeff and Sanjay, as much talented and prolific as they are, are singlehandedly responsible for Googles success.

Re: How did Google get so big?

#93

Post by tills13 »

zjaffee wrote: post #78
ur-whale wrote: post #25

Why is Google being big a problem? Who are they hurting by being big at this time? [edit]: to elaborate, I was under the impression that the whole point of anti-monopoly regulations was to protect consumers from monopolistic predatory practices, not to prevent monopolies from actually existing per se. Hence my question: is there anyone actually being hurt by the currently limited choice of search engines or phone ope…

It's not so much they are hurting anyone, since they have made it virtually impossible to compete with them. Say you do a search for a particular location, the first thing that pops up to the the top of the page is a box with some information pulled from wikipedia and a link/image of it on google maps. Search for a band, and you see the same with links to youtube and google music. Search for online storage and you se…

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 their fault, but it's not a bad thing).

Re: How did Google get so big?

#94

Post by jasode »

ebikelaw wrote: post #86
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…

That doesn't provide a perfect answer. Sanjay and Jeff (and a lot of other senior Googlers) were all at DEC. Why didn't DEC succeed to the degree that Google has?

I don't know if Sanjay and Jeff worked directly on DEC's AltaVista search engine but that project was treated as a low-priority "demo showcase" for DEC Alpha servers instead of being seen by DEC management as a new multibillion dollar internet business to pursue. DEC could have had a "Bezos-hey-we-can-sell-computing-as-AWS" moment with AltaVista but they missed it and let Google surpass it.

Re: How did Google get so big?

#95

Post by abandonliberty »

chargingmylaser wrote: post #76
fixermark wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems to be an open question whether letting a corp play benevolent dictator for some timeframe, at least, is a useful thing.

Bell Labs was a monopoly (at least for a time period) and yielded countless high-impact, transformative innovations that a company with fewer resources (probably) would not have been able to develop. I think (although I could be wrong) most would agree they were a net benefit to society.

In our local post-monopoly phone provider, 30 years ago dispatchers would call the local strip club bartender to reach their technicians. They were all on a first name basis.

It was much better to work for these companies back then. Now, everything is super efficient and all that extra value the technicians generate go straight to executives and shareholders.

Re: How did Google get so big?

#96

Post by acover »

fixermark wrote: post #81
acover wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You make a good point. I don't see why that type of sharing can't happen with open source services. Though it would require more customer consent.

Personal opinion: the fact that type of sharing hasn't happened with open source services speaks volumes about the priorities of the open-source communities and is the single-biggest argument in favor of allowing large corporations leeway to create big cool things with big data. I don't see anyone else stepping up to solve the hard problems like this.

Have there been open source projects that had the opportunity to and decided against it?

Re: How did Google get so big?

#97

Post by talltimtom »

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…

Regulations do exist... Europe seems to be the only once even superficially enforcing them.

Re: How did Google get so big?

#98

Post by deklerk »

b_b wrote: post #41
izzydata wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems to be implying it is inherently a bad thing. Is trying to stop innovative companies also a hindrance to technological progress?

The point of antitrust regulations is to stop the anti-innovation practices in the first place, so while they may appear to be a 'benevolent dictator,' they will quickly turn for the worse.

> The point of antitrust regulations is to stop the anti-innovation practices

Is that true? That doesn't match the definition of any antitrust regulation I'm aware of. AFAIK antitrust regulation is intended to enforce _fairness_, not _innovation_. Often the two go hand in hand, of course, but I think it's worth not conflating the two.

Re: How did Google get so big?

#99

Post by mlindner »

talltimtom wrote: post #97
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…

Regulations do exist... Europe seems to be the only once even superficially enforcing them.

Which shows in how they don't create companies that massively reinvent society. They get killed in the cradle before anything can occur. Above examples of massive world reinvention have all been in the US.
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