After 12 years and endless fights with Google, HubPages finds a buyer
cnbc.com
cnbc.com
Over time, slowly, HubPages started positioning themselves as a "get rich quick" scheme. This was especially suitable for them because they would also share your revenue from your AdSense account (60-40? I'm not sure). There were a LOT of affiliate products out there claiming to help you get rich quick with AdSense and HubPages. They allowed this nonsense to grow like a snowball. Now, I also made some money with their platform. Not too much, maybe about $100-200 in 2 months. I did try to scale my earnings, but realized the real guys who were getting rich were the ones who were teaching me (with courses, books) on how to get rich.
Around 2008-2009-ish if I'm not wrong, HubPages became the hub of Spam. And then Google hit everyone hard with their algorithmic changes. It hit everyone really hard. Even some of my quality hubs disappeared over night. Ever since then, I learnt two lessons:
1) Don't rely 100% on someone else's (free) platform to host your content. Use your own or pay for it.
2) If someone teaches you how to get rich, you can be 100% sure he/she's getting rich because of you.
I never looked back at HubPages since then. Today, I logged in and wiped out all information about me. Just had a look around and seems like not much has changed since I last left them.
Yes, small publishers struggle in Google. And some of them produce very useful content that should be more visible. HubPages isnt one of them though.
wikiHow.com is an example I always see ranked high in search results but the content is 99% garbage. Given high number of "how to" searches the world sees, I'm surprised Google keeps them so highly rated.
> "Paul and I are aligned because we both agree that mom-and-pop or small publishers no longer have a sustainable business," Heckman said in an interview. "It's over."
This is the biggest reason Google needs to be reined in by splitting it apart.
Google, under Eric Smidt,start prioritizing big/branded sites over mom-and-pop. Nothing wrong with it - their search, their choice. The problem is that because they have overwhelming market share, there is no other choice left for smaller sites, but to shut down.
They have overwhelming search market share not just because of search algo, but because they own the hardware that powers it, they own the browser which delivers those result, they own the analytics which tells them more about you and they own the ads on every site you go to.
A startup should have the right to compete with Google - even if they dont build their own browser, even if they dont build their own analytics, even without the huge hardware farms and even without the ad engine that powers google.
Once we split Google up, these network effects go away. Smaller startups can compete with Google on a relatively better footing. There can be more than one search providers and hopefully some of them can favour smaller shops as opposed to bigger brands.
TLDR; cap number of employees for big tech
Wouldn't this be possible across tech teams as well? To meet some cap rules?
That being said, I havent completely thought through this strategy - it might require additional regulation to work or there might be a better approach altogether.
Other than the exclusivity deal that they would have with Google and all the non-compete and NDAs they would have to sign.
So you will tell Ford to shut down assembly lines to meet some arbitrary cap? That’s going to make manufactured goods either skyrocket in cost or, result in companies like Google or Ford just moving outside the US.
And what’s the benefit to the consumer of a broken up Google? Will I get a better search engine? Is the current one most people use somehow broken? Or is this all just philosophical? Meaning.. is there a startup right now that can’t compete because of Google? Is Google actually preventing them from building infrastructure, hiring people or doing really whatever they want?
Remember when Apple was born? HP and IBM were juggernauts. But a new innovative company eventually dethroned the both of those companies. Actually Apple dethroned every single company since Apple is the most valuable company on the planet. And it started in a garage going against the ubiquitous Big Blue.
We don’t need to break up anyone — we need people reading this to start building some real shit. With all the effort put into crypto currencies and other such trendy nonsense — how many people have tried to build and market better search? How many people are actually trying to solve hard problems that people care about? Honesty, nobody in the real world cares about Bitcoin. Google has a “monopoly” because it seems like nobody is trying to make something better!
If Google search were actually bad but we were still forced to use it, that would be an abuse of a monopoly position. However, Google actually works pretty good most of the time. It literally works better than any other search engine I’ve tried. So, for that reason, we break up the company? That’s ridiculous. How about putting that effort into making something better? Breaking up the leader just because they are literally too popular? That’s crazy.
Didn’t some ridiculous juicer raise tens of millions of dollars? Didn’t Mattermark waste $17 million or so just to gather startup data? Is there nobody actually trying to compete with Google?
My point is that the problem isn’t Google; it’s the attitude that Google can’t be beaten. ANY company can be beaten — it doesnt take the government, it takes motivated people.
Search is at the core of the internet. It is too important to be allowed in the hands of a single player.
Google Shopping, for instance, is a search system for product information. Is it a separate "website?" If so, why?
The Bells were broken up because another telco can't compete in a market where lines are already physically run. This is not the case for search.
Edited to add: Perhaps the main problem is that Google has access to waaaaay more data than anybody else. They know what everyone is searching for. They know which search results get clicked on. The data that you would need to have any hope of building a better search engine is all owned by Google, so there is no real hope of competing with them.
If you mean "relatively tiny" in terms of traffic, how do you know that's not just brand recognition at this point---Google still thought of as a "search engine company," MS as "an OS and business software company dabbling in search?"
You're advocating for limiting a companies ability to provide a product to the customers that the customers want, so that others are able to compete. Using regulation and laws to hamstring a companies ability to provide a successful and demanded product or suite of products doesn't improve things from a consumer standpoint, it actually limits both the product they have now, and the products that may be developed in the future in the space you opened up with regulation.
The combined ecosystem of google is optional (I use google services in multiple browsers, I block all adds including google, the hardware it runs on is irrelevant to me, I could use bing or other search providers if they offer better results, sometimes I do).
The fact is the google ecosystem is convenient, but its not a huge value add for the customer like you represent. I'm able to switch out any one google product for a competitor without a significant impact to my daily working life, but none of those other products that startups or others have provided are better than what google offers (browser, email, search). Even Amazon has taken android and stripped out the google suite, and that is a successful product showing that it can be done and has been done.
Startups have always had the incumbent/entrenched product to deal with. If its significantly revolutionary and disruptive, that overcomes the incumbents advantages of size, exposure and entrenchment. The issue is Google is not only innovating at the large scale, but actively seeks out and purchases startups with approaches that are better and implements those in house (sometimes, or just squashes the startup and moves the IP and people elsewhere for its own benefits).
Large companies like MSFT, Apple, GOOG, Salesforce etc.. have learned that at scale, you can't innovate as quickly due to unavoidable corporate overhead, but you can purchase innovation and implement it internally (some do it better, many worse). If the problem is google doesn't have any competitors/startups that are able to break into the market, its either due to a lack of innovation/disruption in that market segment, or if there is, google/others are purchasing that rather than compete against it.
Should we break up Wikipedia so smaller knowledge archives can compete?
Wikipedia doesnt own 90% of the 'knowledge base' market - maybe not even 9%. If it did, then there might be a case for it too.
Google has, for example:
* Used search to promote their yelp alternative (this is a big part of the EU antitrust case);
* used search to promote chrome;
* used search to attempt to compete with fb (having google+ bumped location in search results / gave you better display in search results)
To me mobile devices are an example of this. PalmOS or FirefoxOS could maybe have succeeded if Android and iOS weren't that overwhelming. Apple and Google can control whatever they want to be on their devices and what they don't like. Innovation is pretty much stopped.