Comments on: Whether Google is a monopoly isn’t the point

By: Plutarch

Plutarch — Sun, 02 Oct 2011 13:55:15 +0000

The real issue gets lost in the details of the article. People innovate when there is adequate incentive. Large companies can innovate (consider Apple). They cannot innovate forever in response to current need. They cannot possibly foresee what is next all the time. If a single human organization controls the majority stake in a world view or a product, then the people (producers and consumers) can be blind-sided by a disruption. Disruptions don’t just sometimes happen. They always happen. ‘Always’ is a strong word to use in rational arguments. However, can anyone demonstrate a reasonable counter-point to the notion that change occurs? While markets do work (and are working even with large consolidated companies) large human organizations homogenize philosophies, ideas, and culture. This becomes a problem when a disruption occurs that does not fit into the homogenized human behavior. The organization is overwhelmed by the new reality and comes apart. When these organizations are sufficiently large and interconnected with much of the economy, real and significant problems can occur for people who were not customers nor stock-holders nor employees. I do not think the collapse of a Microsoft or a Google would break innovation forever; it could delay it for a long time, though.

By: txpatriot

txpatriot — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 20:07:57 +0000

People seem to forget that when Google started, Yahoo was the big name in search.

Who the heck uses Yahoo now? Ten years from now, there may be a “new google”. Doing it better, cheaper, faster is what competition is all about. As far as I can tell, Google isn’t pointing a gun at anyone’s head telling them they can’t start their own search engine. And don’t give me any “first-mover advantage” crap — Google wasn’t the first. They simply did it better.

Well, let the next guy figure out a way to do it better still!

By: hebedin

hebedin — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 14:16:29 +0000

You can find the details at book-grab dot com
However, Google is not the problem. Its FB which is killing internet and all sites now stand so that they must use FB icons, buttons, even comment system – a deadly and evil monopoly that takes away the uniqueness of the sites, their independence, and everything making all sites having the same cookie cutter FB thingies. Its sheer amazing that the world likes so much to be slave. In some other planet people would have just quit FB and shared their love for at least another dozen social nets which are still thriving.

By: Mathew Ingram

Mathew Ingram — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 01:04:31 +0000

Thanks for the comment, Tom. I have no idea whether Yelp’s or Google’s reviews are better. But if it turns out that Google’s are bad or unhelpful then I will start using Yelp instead — which is exactly the same thing that anyone else can do if they wish.

By: tomblue

tomblue — Sun, 25 Sep 2011 17:51:19 +0000

Matt: I disagree. This is far from objective. Can you honestly say that Google Places has better reviews than Yelp? Here are some reviews for the restaurant Gary Danko in San Francisco.

Yelp: http://www.yelp.com/biz/gary-danko-san-francisco
Places: http://bit.ly/ofKtIN

“love it” and “our favorite restaurant” in Places is not helpful. Not to mention Yelp has 3X as many reviews.

Now, do a search for san francisco restaurant reviews. Google dominates the first 7 spots of organic search. Given the spots are smaller than normal so let’s say they take up 5 spots. If you know anything about SEO you know that having the first 5 spots is having 90% of the clicks.

This is clearly bad for consumers and 100% anti-competitive.

Look at it from GigaOm’s point of view. What if Google owned a tech blog and they dominated the first 5 results in Google and all other tech blogs were behind their results? Even if their writing was marginal they would still receive more traffic and ad revenue than you. How is that good for competition and how is that good for consumers?

You can’t say, “Google wouldn’t do that” – Yes, they would. They are doing that right now, but just in a different content niche. It just doesn’t affect you so it is hard for you to empathize.

I can’t figure out why the tech media aren’t more honest about Google? Are they still holding onto “do no evil” or are they afraid to speak out?

By: Ian Betteridge

Ian Betteridge — Sun, 25 Sep 2011 17:19:13 +0000

“The problem with a company like Google — as opposed to a company like Microsoft, the last major antitrust investigation in the technology sphere — is that users don’t actually pay for the vast majority of its products and services.”

Customers didn’t pay for IE either, but the giving away of IE was part of a strategy which was an abuse of Microsoft’s monopoly powers.

By: Hamranhansenhansen

Hamranhansenhansen — Sun, 25 Sep 2011 08:53:57 +0000

To me it is very simple: a person should be able to live a life free of any particular company. Apple-free or Microsoft-free or Google-free.

In the late 1990′s, even though I used a Mac and Adobe and Macromedia tools that were far superior to anything Microsoft made, I had to buy Microsoft Office because my publisher’s book templates were Microsoft Word. In the early 2000′s, I had to buy Windows and VirtualPC because I had to test websites in IE6 which only ran on Windows and did not respect the HTML specification. That kind of stuff is oppressive. These days I make standard ePub books and standard HTML5 Web apps and have no Microsoft software, yet Microsoft users can still read my books and websites. Similarly, another author may work with no Apple tools and still I can read his books and websites. So the Microsoft anti-trust trial could have had a simple remedy of requiring Microsoft to conform to vendor neutral open standards. Instead, we had to wait for Mcrosoft to finally figure that out themselves 10 years later.

So here is the thing with Google: I tried living a Google-free life and can’t do it. Even though I have ads from a different vendor and block Googlebot with robots.txt, my content still ends up in Google, Pasted into websites covered in Google ads, and showing as top hits in Google Search. Even when I let Googlebot in again, thinking the real version of the content ought to be in there, I can’t beat the other sites in results because I don’t have Google ads. The other sites make Google money and I do not. If I add Google ads, shafting the ad network I’m using now, and if I put at least 6 Google ads on each page, it looks like I would have a chance at the top hit for the name of my own original content, with the 9 below me all bootlegs.

So is that just the breaks? Run Google ads on your content or someone else will? Welcome to the Web, do you have a Google account? Why even have HTML in that case? Why not use GHTML? A key feature of the Web is vendor neutral open standards. Why bother if the index that most people use is owned by a single company who uses it anti-competitively? Google Search should be something akin to Consumer Reports. The fact that there is even a question of impartiality means Google already failed.

By: Chris

Chris — Sun, 25 Sep 2011 06:22:40 +0000

Why are new businesses prevented from starting internet companies? Does Google actively prevent new companies from getting non-repeat traffic to a degree greater than Altavista did? Do new companies with no reputation deserve non-repeat traffic? Should Google be forced to give every new company a number of google homepage users in popup traffic?

By: Chris

Chris — Sun, 25 Sep 2011 06:17:27 +0000

No, Google is providing clear evidence to startups that it has no interest in the market.

By: raphaelmoras

raphaelmoras — Sun, 25 Sep 2011 06:14:52 +0000

A monopoly requires some sort of control over the existence of competition, which Google does not have. What it does have are strong capital invested, huge commercial success and a billion satisfied clients.

Anyone can start a business of search engine.