Apple sells hardware and is not a monopoly, so if their customers are happy with their choice then good for them.
On the other hand Google is a monopoly, so a lot of people are not ok with them abusing their position to hijack the web (that they already “own”) and email.
Edit: typo
I provide paid email services for my clients, they can use Gmail if they want, or not. But for SEO, it's Google all the way down...
Bing, Yahoo, DuckDuckGo... they're all viable products that you can use to accomplish 90ish% of what Google could find, and maybe even more now that Google strips historical data (see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16153840, from a month ago).
Since you're mentioning SEO, I just checked and 15.8% of searches for my website came from non-Google search engines in the last month (in my case, Yandex and DDG are the most popular ones). Bing is also taking a huge chunk of the traffic thanks to Windows 10 using it in the start menu, whether you like it or not. And while one example isn't viable enough to make general statements, it's clear that alternatives do exist and are used extensively.
It's a product that's superior when compared to its competitors. It's not a monopoly though.
I agree there are options, but they are Bing and Yandex. The others are just mashups.
Just so everyone's clear, monopoly doesn't mean (nearly) 100% market share; it means a large enough market share to be able to manipulate the market.
So, to elaborate on your first point, I think you're saying that the ease of switching search engines means that a market share necessary to manipulate the search market would be near 100%, much higher than Google has. Am I reading you correctly?
Since search engines are all free to use, many of the criteria of a monopoly seem hard to apply, but the classic defintions I'm familiar with include things such as "no reasonable substitute" which is not the case for Google Search.
https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/competition-guidance/guide-a...
Google is dominate for sure.
Google isn't a monopoly for users, it's a monopoly for developers. You can't get users without being on Google.
Only if I can replace one company with another, at roughly equal results, can the market be considered competitive.
I can't delist my site on Google and replace those users with Bing users.
If each search engine had only 5% or 10% of the market, though, I could. And I might. That's what a competitive market looks like.
Google is, from that perspective, a monopoly.
Not really.
And yet, thanks to their broken spam filters, you may have to.
And while Google has monopsonic power, it isn't the sole player in the market so it's not a true monopsony. Facebook, Twitter, and other channels have control as well. If you still disagree, look at how widespread Facebook's open graph standards are as proof of the market catering to these companies' purchasing power.
Or just look at the header on the article: https://i.imgur.com/XlGgTaw.png
Simply because if they start pushing some format, everyone must go along with them. Your private server can afford to not be inter operable with Microsoft, Yahoo, and AOL, but not Google.
And you can rest assured that email you send, anywhere, will eventually be forwarded to someone on a Google server. If not directly, than via Google Apps.
But in literal terms as well: It happens all the time that I ask for someone's email, and they respond with the username and assume the "@gmail.com".
An awful lot of big players won’t host their email on someone else’s service, so gmail is just not an option. If you deal with any business using primarily windows, there will also be a huge probability it’s running a Microsoft stack in full, from account management, email to file hosting.
Seems we are not living on the same planet.
Citation needed. This is the opposite of much of the world of work, where emails often both originate and terminate in Exchange Servers, not touching gmail servers.
Feels as monopolish as any other monopoly i’ve seen in technology.
A monopoly situation would have some kind of limits enforced, correct?
I have dealt with spam issues with Gmail and solved them all. I send HTML formatted email to many Gmail accounts. I suspect you have not setup SPF, DKIM or are blacklisted on spam lists. Or if you've done all this, possibly the formats for your emails is suspect. Either way, it's solvable. At the very least, your clients could white list your domain.
Edit: I am not saying it's pleasant, but it's hardly monopolistic behavior...
> I suspect you have not setup SPF, DKIM or are blacklisted on spam lists. Or if you've done all this, possibly the formats for your emails is suspect.
In what sense is this "work[ing] just fine?" "Sorry, we threw away your mail for some random reason, and we won't tell you about it" seems like poor service.
I did testing and found it was not random. Also, maybe my experience running SpamAssassin in the past helped me. Look up how SpamAssassin filters emails and it may help you with your problem.
No. A monopoly simply means market domination. It can arise naturally, as has been the case for Google in search in the past.
Microsoft had a monopoly on operating systems without "enforced limits".
The specific legal tests often require e.g. "over 80% of relevant market" by some measures - and I'm not sure Google mail qualifies as a monopoly under this definition.
p.s. having a monopoly isn't even illegal - abusing a monopoly position is. It feels to me that Google is, in many ways, abusing its dominant, perhaps monopoly, position in mail handling.
I've been in your position so I understand your frustration, but what you're describing is not evidence of a monopoly.
1. You knew the trade-off when you purchased an Apple device.
2. This is an unexpected change on a service your digital identity is tied to.
That's why the equivalence the OP is making here is absurd.
Shooting heroin is a choice, but it isn't wise, just as choosing to institute the manufacturer as an app gatekeeper, nay UNIVERSAL overlord of the hardware, software, services & content - something unprecedented in history.
And you're making me defend Google though I do not want to, but for accuracy's sake, they are neither a monopoly in email nor are they forcing other providers to choose AMP within their email. Just download all your Gmail data via IMAP and siphon it off to Apple's email client/server. And pray hard that Apple will CHOOSE to let you read emails tjhat weren't originally received/sent via their server/hardware/asshole