Hacker News Reader

Comment by ur-whale | Hacker News Reader

Why is Google being big a problem? Who are they hurting by being big at this time?

[edit]: to elaborate, I was under the impression that the whole point of anti-monopoly regulations was to protect consumers from monopolistic predatory practices, not to prevent monopolies from actually existing per se.

Hence my question: is there anyone actually being hurt by the currently limited choice of search engines or phone operating systems?

Also, what prevents someone from trying to build a much better one?

If Google starts to misbehave as a monopoly, fine, let the USG (themselves a monopoly, btw) do their thing go after them.

But as long as they provide a superior service for free (yeah, I know, you're the product, blah, blah), I'm not sure I'm seeing the problem.

View on HN

One example: By preventing phone manufacturers who use Android and Google services from also selling phones with other operating systems they are killing the opportunity for another phone OS from gaining traction.

We could have missed out on the opportunity for something better than Android being developed and we'll never know. It's called dumping; flooding the market with something free to kill competition and make sure Google is in the majority of hands in Europe.

If I'm not mistaken, they contractually limited manufacturers from selling devices with Android forks, according to Google to avoid experience fragmentation.

AFAIK the terms didn't limit any other operating systems not based on Android.

Yep actually I retact part of my original comment. Thanks for the correction.

The dumping part is still valid because any OS that isn't free and relies on licencing can't complete with an OS that makes it money from a secondary business like search and advertising.

Google gave away Android to make sure it dominated mobile advertising. Any OS reliying on profits directly from licencing the OS cannot complete.

Your comment is still false. Google allows Android forks with their services installed. You just can't break the API, which makes sense, otherwise apps from the store wouldn't reliably work.

No, the dumping part is valid. Free OS with free services to kill competition.

Wouldn't this line of thinking mean all open source code just dumping? The linux kernel, with lots of its development done by either volunteers or employees of companies who use it, is also given away for free. How can a paid licensed OS compete with what is essentially a co-op of developers across organizations giving the code away for free?

Is Firefox also dumping, since it's available for free, funded by donations and the default search provider?

This only becomes an issue when you are a monopoly as this is when it hurts the consumers ability to choose alternatives. If Android truely is the best option let the customer decide without trying to stifel competition.

Firefox and Linux don't work to stop competition in the same way. Neither care if manufactures provide other options or flavors and Linux especially has commercial forks like OSX and Android.

This is false. Samsung and others made Microsoft phones as long as it was a viable alternative. Google restricted others to prevent a split of their own platform - Android.

It's not so much they are hurting anyone, since they have made it virtually impossible to compete with them.

Say you do a search for a particular location, the first thing that pops up to the the top of the page is a box with some information pulled from wikipedia and a link/image of it on google maps. Search for a band, and you see the same with links to youtube and google music. Search for online storage and you see the same thing.

While google has been audited time and time again to prove that their search engine totally allows competitors to make an impact against some of these sorts of things. Even without the box, the builder of the worlds most used search engine is certainly very good at search engine optimization for their own products.

Couldn’t people just stop using Google search though? There’s Bing, Duckduckgo, Ask.com (are they still around?)

The problem isn't google search as much as it is the fact that google search and their ad products allows them to promote their own products at a cost far less than their competitors.

Google advertises their products using their own ad network. And yes, they does cost them in opportunity cost because instead of making money selling that ad spot, they are claiming that space themselves depriving themselves of the revenue.

There shouldn't be a problem. If I offer two services and I advertise service 2 on the website for service 1 I'm just doing what makes sense.

I agree, it’s like Domino’s advertising their cinnamon sticks (or whatever) on their pizza boxes. They don’t have to advertise Papa John’s cinnamon sticks. Why should they?

What you are saying isn't normally a problem, the problem is the fact that google is by far the largest digital advertiser, where their core product is information retrieval. If you are able to manipulate information retrieval in your favor that's an unfair advantage.

if they're _purposefully_ ranking their own services above competing services, then yes, I agree they should be fined until they stop. _however_, more often than not, their own service is _exactly_ what I'm looking for - be it GPM/YouTube/Maps/etc.

It's not really their fault they're head and shoulders above the competition/the de-facto provider for most of the content people search for every day (well, maybe it is their fault, but it's not a bad thing).

Exactly. I really don't understand why people try and muddy the waters around Google products. I'm not forced to use Google; Google products are just damn good.

Having a monopoly in a market due to the fact that your product is just that good isn't a bad thing, and punishing companies for being successful sets an awful precedent (which is why breaking up Google isn't going to happen). From search, maps, email, YouTube, and to photos, Google products are widely used because they're completely free (aside from the data collection portion) and they're best in class.

Please don't lie to us and act like Google's monopoly position is hurting the market. I'm sure Google is doing some shady stuff on the edges, but nothing so egregious to warrant antitrust action.

Why are their products that good? What is it that makes content creators publish on youtube rather than on other platforms. I'd argue that a huge part of this is the fact that youtube gives creators more visibility than other places, and since google is able to leverage search in addition to their advertising business to bring more eyes to youtube is the reason for the platforms success.

I think your confusing googles monopoly not hurting the market with not hurting their consumers. But to suggest that they don't make it near impossible for anyone to compete against them is absolutely them hurting the market. Namely, the equity value of google would be more balanced with other smaller firms, and in turn we'd see more very rich people rather than fewer people with net worths well over 10 billion.

>Namely, the equity value of google would be more balanced with other smaller firms, and in turn we'd see more very rich people rather than fewer people with net worths well over 10 billion.

Why would that be a good thing? Or rather, a better thing than the current situation? Why would that even be desirable?

Again, antitrust laws exist for one reason: to protect consumers. Not to implement someone's idea of an ideal society or market.

If you believe e.g. that company equity should be more uniformly distributed, go talk to your congressman, have him draft a law to that effect and get congress to vote on it.

> Why would that be a good thing? Or rather, a better thing than the current situation? Why would that even be desirable?

Because wealth inequality is massively harmful for society. It's the sort of thing that leads to revolution.

> If you believe e.g. that company equity should be more uniformly distributed, go talk to your congressman, have him draft a law to that effect and get congress to vote on it.

and then Google writes him a check and the whole thing goes away. Biggest lobbyist around.

> Because wealth inequality is massively harmful for society.

Nope.

Hunger, poverty, lack of education, lack of access to medical care, etc.. is harmful to society and leads to revolutions and whatever root cause leads to those is to be fought against.

Except that wealth inequality isn't such a root cause.

Wealth inequality isn't and has never been a problem except in the minds of utopian ideologues, collectivists or people with a basic jealousy problem.

You're pretty dismissive of a theory I find interesting, I wonder if you've ever really entertained the idea that a wealthy country will cater its services to those who can pay, leaving those who can't pay behind.

So USA has a high median income, so we have high education outcomes, high healthcare outcomes, right? We certainly have the best schools and the best hospitals. But only the top few percentile can afford the best schools and best hospitals, everyone else gets left behind.

But we have higher infant mortality than many countries with lower incomes, and we don't compete so well when it comes to average assessment scores.

Naturally I was exposed to this thinking via a TED talk years ago, from this guy:

https://www.ted.com/talks/richard_wilkinson

Maybe you want to offer a rebuttal, or maybe you just want to insist he's jealous.

> Wealth inequality isn't and has never been a problem except in the minds of utopian ideologues, collectivists or people with a basic jealousy problem

"Let them eat cake"

Cheap shot, unworthy of HN.

> Hunger, poverty, lack of education, lack of access to medical care, etc...

All of these woes were in play at that time.

Unlike the poster above who showed a source that tries (and fails imo) to show causation between wealth inequality and said woes, you provided exactly zero value to the conversation.

Good job.

There are Google products which are inferior compared to their competitors, and usage rates show that as well: YouTube Gaming/YT livestreaming are basically platforms that only host people banned from Twitch.

Youtube live will keep vods for life and has had a DVR feature since release. Twitch doesn't do either.

They tend to release great products, their problem is that they just don't always do it first.

I still see plenty of other video listings from other sites in my Google search results, and even if they're ranked above equivalent YouTube results I always pick the YouTube listing.

I have no doubts why I do this; YouTube provides a far better experience. It's incredibly bandwidth efficient even when my connection is slow, it's very responsive when seeking, and their time-to-first-video-frame is really good. And perhaps most importantly, it's consistently good. I don't get UI or playback issues every 10th video.

I cannot say the same for any other video host I've come across in my life. It's ridiculous how far ahead YouTube is on technology alone, and I still haven't found any site that can match it.

Google Photos was horrendous for years, and they aquihired several best-in-class companies (Picasa, and then a few mobile photo editing apps) and killed their products.

Is it because their products are that good, or because they have one monopoly that also functions as a money hose that they can aim as needed to decimate competition in other areas.

Yes, because all Google has to do is use their search money to destroy the competition; it's not like Google has any failed products or anything. /s

Also, being a multibillion dollar company and using your billions in one product line to either prop up or build another product isn't illegal. It's just business.

Did you ever use Excite/Alta Vista/Yahoo, MapQuest, Hotmail, etc? Because if you had, you wouldn't have to ask that question. Every product Google has had success with was better than the competition by a large margin. When it failed (Google+) it gained zero traction.

The competition sucked and they have yet to make something better.

> I'm sure Google is doing some shady stuff on the edges, but nothing so egregious to warrant antitrust action.

And when they do do stuff that is so egregious but they are too big ($$$) how are you going to stop them from abuse? Isn't this why, for example, people absolutely loathe telecom/ISPs? Sure they were great when the internet first came out ("it was just that good"), but now look how abusive they are since only a few co's own the copper that runs into your house.

We have to think deeper as to why their service is the one that's preferred though.

Part of it is the fact that they had historically been able to subsidize the monetization potential of their other services in order to out compete those who needed their services to make money.

The other half is more speculation, but certainly very possible, that they've been able to play this game for a long enough time that they have been able to use search to build these brands in such a way that makes us think of them first for all of these services. Brand power is a very powerful thing, and considering the fact that they have a subsidized ability to advertise to us (both through promoting things in search, and by not needing to pay themselves for adsense/adwords) is what has made these the more high quality services over time since we have given our data to them.

VC funded startups also subsidize product development and marketing.

Travel search engines used to be big business. They still are, but they're hurting, and not a small part of it is due to Google having a onebox of flight info. I personally love that onebox - I book all my flights through it - but I'd have a hard time explaining how it's not anticompetitive. Vertical integration can have some great efficiencies, but it can also destroy once healthy markets, and I only see that getting worse with modern supply chain management and similar technologies.

Are travel search engines hurting? priceline's stock is higher than ever?

This said, I agree with you on everything else you've said.

As is Expedias, though Trivago has been terrible since ipo; my assertion was not well founded.

>well, maybe it is their fault, but it's not a bad thing

I'd argue that having a single entity have such power over something so critical as being bad by nature. Concentrated power is the root of evil.

Worth noting they have been fined int he EU for this behaviour. They destroyed some guys business with their self promotion.

Google has too much power. They should be broken up for hte good of society.

So what? Businesses are born and die every day.

Every major US tech company is being fined in the EU nowadays. Poor EU regulation shouldn't dictate US policy.

So if your business doesn't stand a chance and goes under due to unfair competition, you'd be fine with it, since "businesses are born and die every day"?

And what exactly would "US policy" be in this context?

Bing works just fine, but people don't use it because it's not what they're used to. Rarely does Google have an actual monopoly where new competitors can't enter the field - in fact, for every Google product I can give you a viable alternative. The only difference is that Google is winning.

Outside of search, you should ask why are they winning? Better products don't necessarily have better user numbers due to how much network effects play into a lot of googles products. There's no doubt in my mind that google has been able to leverage their search and advertising businesses, not only as products themselves, but also their knowledge in the space, to push users to, and keep their eyes on said products.

If apple and google traded maps products, it's very likely that web and android users would still largely use the google one more often than apple maps is being used now since they have more power to guide you into using the product. The same applies to them advertising chrome when you open up another browser to google.com.

> Bing works just fine, but people don't use it because it's not what they're used to.

I don't use it because it isn't better. I'm not going to switch to something of equal value. Make something better and then I'll switch.

Bing works fine for a rather narrow subset of queries most people need.

>Say you do a search for a particular location, the first thing that pops up to the the top of the page is a box with some information pulled from wikipedia and a link/image of it on google maps.

You're saying Google provided you with exactly the information you were looking for in the first place. And for free, btw.

That clearly can't be allowed to stand.

Whats good for consumers isn't whats good for the broader market, we wouldn't see mega billionares with net worths close to that of previous captains of industry if we forced them to allow others to compete (where the only viable way to do so from my perspective is to not let them compete at all). In every other industry you see far less vertical integration due to the history of how companies have been regulated against (i.e. Car and airplane manufacturers are using very few of their own parts).

Society doesn't really care whether there are 10 megabillionaires or 100 minor billionaires.

It is already happening that some (old) sites or blogs aren't popping up in their search results.

Their competitors?

This is irrelevant to American anti-trust law. Europe will move to protect competitors, but America will only act to protect the consumer.

America only moves to protect the money.

When does the US act in the interest of the consumer?

In the US that's true. It's a really awful system.

Also the place where something like Google - massively useful to the whole world - was born.

Awful indeed.

and was allowed to grow into a behemoth capable of perverting democracy and engaging in essentially any behaviour it desires, from a business standpoint.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com