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Comment by inopinatus | Hacker News Reader

The most pointed quote in the article is “No one wants to face the reality that this is an advertising company with a bunch of hobbies.”

But without search, without Gmail, without Chrome, without Android, without the moonshots and all the "hobbies" Google's brand would wither, and its access to data at massive scale would be crippled, and its access to eyeballs would be curtailed, and the talent would walk. Others have built advertising businesses, but Google's dominance in advertising couldn't occur without the product mix.

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All of Google's products are complementary products that create lock-in.

For instance both Chrome and Android have been created with the purpose of controlling the underlying platform that people use, in order for them to not be at the mercy of the other platform owners, like Apple or Microsoft. And it worked.

This is very obvious to anybody with an interest in how microeconomics works. For example this is why open source can exist in a world where people need to struggle to put food on the table. It's basic knowledge: complementary goods and services are meant to increase demand for your cash cows.

But alas good journalism is dead.

A good blog post on what youre talking about

https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/06/12/strategy-letter-v/

On a side note, I'm glad to see Joel has re-themed his blog posts but kept them hosted at the same URLs.

Many of these posts seem timeless and often very prescient.

In fact, at the bottom of this one, he points out the strategic dead-end Sun was heading down with commoditizing software while also making/promoting Java that commoditized their hardware...

He recently moved to WordPress, after having used his own blogging tool for years: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2016/12/09/rip-citydesk/

He's got a great prescient paragraph at the bottom:

> Sun is the loose cannon of the computer industry. Unable to see past their raging fear and loathing of Microsoft, they adopt strategies based on anger rather than self-interest. Sun’s two strategies are (a) make software a commodity by promoting and developing free software (Star Office, Linux, Apache, Gnome, etc), and (b) make hardware a commodity by promoting Java, with its bytecode architecture and WORA. OK, Sun, pop quiz: when the music stops, where are you going to sit down? Without proprietary advantages in hardware or software, you’re going to have to take the commodity price, which barely covers the cost of cheap factories in Guadalajara, not your cushy offices in Silicon Valley.

Indeed Sun got eaten alive by commodity hardware while not having any viable strategy to make money on software.

"All of Google's products..." and there are many "create lock-in." so very true

How have there been no anti-trust related issues here?!

Because antitrust law is made of words that mean things. There is no field, anywhere, in which Google has the monopolistic position necessary, or has been shown to be in an oligopolic group necessary, to invoke antitrust law against the company. Not search, not ads, not mobile, not e-mail, not anywhere. They have competition, and healthy competition, in literally every field.

You didn't need to be an asshole. But, you went and were.

I answered the breathless and silly question you asked here instead of punching in your surely-not-Google search engine of choice with exactly the level of seriousness with which I regarded it. HTH. HAND.

"All of Google's products are complementary products that create lock-in"

I disagree. Chrome was created to be a standards based browser, Android to unify the different phone operating systems circa 2004. I picked Google products because they allowed me to get out if I needed to. Gmail provides IMAP, POP. Docs and Music let you take out your data as needed. Google intentionally creates a way to get your data out. All of these things require foresight and work to pull off.

Does the lock-in exist because no one else is offering the same service? Potentially. But the intention of the company when they created these services was to create the best service, not a lock-in service.

They're just ad distributing products.

Ever tried to install an adblocker on Android? There isn't anything you can do without rooting your phone. Seriously, it should be called Addroid.

Ever tried to install adblock/ublock on Chrome? only to find out that it doesn't exist in the chrome store or was removed again.

Well, actually Android is the most friendly mobile platform for ad-blockers, or other hacks.

What you're complaining about is Chrome for Android, but then again Android is also the only mobile platform supported by a real Firefox implementation that has plugins, including ad-blockers.

You're talking about rooting the phone, I guess you want /etc/hosts or something, but you know, even on the desktop that kind of solution requires sudo rights. This one is entirely about security and really, Android is not that hard to root.

And even though I'm a Firefox user on the desktop, I've also used Chrome with AdBlock Plus and then uBlock Origin and never had any problems.

Note: Firefox on android has only supported plugins since a few months ago.

Not true, it has supported add-ons on Android for years.

I've been using plugins on Firefox on Android for a lot longer than that -- there might not be so many plugins, but many of the important ones were there.

For example, AdBlock Plus added mobile support in version 1.1.2, supporting Fennec 1.0 Beta 6, released 2009/12/12.

> You're talking about rooting the phone, I guess you want /etc/hosts or something, but you know, even on the desktop that kind of solution requires sudo rights. This one is entirely about security and really, Android is not that hard to root.

You don't have to root your phone. You can install an Open Source VPS app which filters ads, no root required (and data stays on your phone).

I use an adblocker on Android all the time, and I've never bothered to figure out how to root a phone. It was not at all difficult. Maybe it's hard with Chrome but that's no big deal - just use Firefox.

> Ever tried to install an adblocker on Android?

Yes. Works across browsers and against in-app ads, too. https://block-this.com

> Ever tried to install adblock/ublock on Chrome?

Yes.

> only to find out that it doesn't exist in the chrome store or was removed again.

Under no circumstances. AdBlock Plus has never, as far as I know, been removed, nor has uBlock Origin.

Well. First commit 6 months ago, that thing is a novelty.

Next we'll see how it goes when you'll try to explain to your sister and your mother how to use that android VPN to block ads.

I've audited literally every line of code in it myself and it's not a novelty. It works and works correctly. You're just wrong--and desperate, because fictional nerd cred, to not be wrong. It's an ugly look. Be better.

My mother doesn't have a smartphone. If she did, I would install it for her and be done with it.

An android project that got its first commit 6 months ago is called a novelty whether you like it or not. You're just refusing to admit it, because fictional nerd cred, to not be wrong. It's an ugly look. Be better.

> Chrome was created to be a standards based browser

Then why not give money to firefox? Why not start contributing more?

instead they built their own, integrated it with google stuff, and pushed it heavily for years and years.

Why not Safari or Opera?

Competition is good. You can make a standards based browser and then add additional features that others can't or won't provide. Building it in house gives them more control. Do you think Mozilla would have developed V8 if google just threw money at them?

Google did give money to firefox. Lots and lots of it.

https://www.cnet.com/news/firefox-maker-mozilla-we-dont-need...

> Google's dominance in advertising couldn't occur without the product mix.

This is absolutely accurate.

Google is what it is because google.com is the best search engine in the world and because GMail is the best web-based mail client -- free or otherwise.

free or otherwise.

Correct, which is why many people have gmail for personal use and google apps gmail for professional.

I can't use Outlook or Yahoo Mail; that's not due to a lack of trying.

There are better alternatives. I use Fastmail.com.

I'd take Zimbra over Gmail any day.

"But without search, without Gmail, without Chrome, without Android, without the moonshots and all the "hobbies" Google's brand would wither"

I'd argue it's less about branding, and more about creating an ecosystem.

exactly, with out those hobbies users like myself would be less "trapped" in the Google ecosystem.

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