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Comment by taurath | Hacker News Reader

> A big price bump with a few months notice is painful (and I'm glad it's bringing competition), but it tells me they're thinking seriously about how to sustain/develop the product and lets both them and me explore the real value of the service.

This is a bit of “thank you sir may I have another”. 10x price increases? It’s not sustainable? This is just a money grab - they’re not going to give a roadmap for how in the future google maps will be worth 10x the value - it seems to me more of a statement from Google that they have no real competition in the space.

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Did you to read the article which mentions all the competitors that are available?

The wording was a bit confusing, but I think the GP meant that Google _thinks_ they have no competition so can get away with sudden price gouging.

Since API's aren't standardized and conversion from one product to another likely requires development work and probably impacts your usage in some way even then - the barriers to switching are high enough that the availability of alternative maps still doesn't represent a whole lot of competition.

This argument is symmetric, it implies all other map providers (who are competitors of google maps and of each other) also have no competitors.

Sure, typically yes. It's not necessary - interoperable APIs exist, and for underdogs they're even attractive as a selling point - but market leaders tend not to play by those rules.

A good competitor can make a drop in replacement possible by aligning their api with that of google's

look how good it went for Microsoft's competitors trying to build a Win32-compatible OS....

Look what Linus and Stallman made to replace UNIX.

What? Like WINE you mean? ;-)

The simple existence of competitors in a market segment is not proof that there is no monopoly. We wouldn't say for example that there are realistic copetitors in the web search space or in the desktop OS space - maps is similar to both of these sitations. (Now I realise that some people like to argue the toss about whether search and desktop OS are monopolies and to that I have no comment)

The search space has bing and to a lesser extent duckduckgo

It's helpful to think about market share per "competitor", not number of competitors:

"However, from a regulatory view, monopoly power exists when a single firm controls 25% or more of a particular market. For example, De Beers is known to have a monopoly in the diamond industry."

https://www.intelligenteconomist.com/monopoly-market-structu...

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