Ask HN: Is Google a Monopoly or just really good at building useful products?
I know that Google is super powerful and has great products but what exactly are (if any) examples of Google showing anti-competitive behaviour?
At least at one point, they nagged you incessantly to install Chrome when you used Google Search. I would attribute Chrome's current dominance [1] to that fact, and that fact alone. That's uncannily like the anti-competitive behavior Microsoft was judged to have used to push Internet Explorer into a dominant position and drive Netscape out of the market.
[1] If Chrome had been allowed to grow its market share organically, I think would have still been popular, just not dominant. Firefox would have a bigger market share than it does now, for instance.
What's with the attitude? I listed Microsoft as an example of anti-competitive behavior. How did you get from there to thinking I'd penned some kind of endorsement of Microsoft?
> Google is not forcing anyone to install this browser nor does it auto install when you navigate to Google search.
The problem is that they're using (or used) their dominance in one area as leverage to gain dominance in another area.
Making it so that a number of the worlds largest properties only work in your own browser comes very close to "forcing" in my opinion.
When should a company be forced to make sure its products works with other companies products? Thats not for me to decide but personally I think there's some extra responsibility for very large companies and personally I'm surprised they haven't been hit with one or two major lawsuits over Chrome yet.
Once you are a monopoly, you can expect such restrictions.
What Google is really good at is evading FTC regulation by staying within FCC jurisdiction. The FCC has historically been hand in hand with industry. The FTC has real teeth.
Also see why: For leveraging a dominant position in one market (search) to intrude on another market (shopping).
This looks suspiciously similar. Google is leveraging a dominant position in search engines to intrude on the browser market.
"The Sherman Act broadly prohibits (1) anticompetitive agreements and (2) unilateral conduct that monopolizes or attempts to monopolize the relevant market."
For example, squashing competition by deleting your competitors search results might be interpreted as an attempt to monopolize the market.
In the context of providing a marketplace (i.e. the App Store), we aren't really looking at "private free speech" any more and so the first amendment does not apply here.
The worst thing about antitrust threads on HN is idiots trying to appear knowledgeable by skimming a Wikipedia article.
I think your attitude is suboptimal here.
Also many anti-competitive behaviors, like certain pricing/tying/bundling/cross-subsidization strategies, are perfectly legal for a small operator, but become illegal when a firm gains immense market power. And there is rarely a "bright line" for when a firm crosses that threshold, and the things it used to do become illegal. The firm pretty much has to wait for pushback via prosecution – actual or threatened – and of course will keep denying there's anything wrong with their habitual practices indefinitely, as a matter of corporate culture.
Google can put in the effort to make a great new product, but use its market dominance to make sure that it’s products have a better chance to succeed vs it’s competitors.
Google certainly isn't as bad at abusing its monopoly power as it could be, but, well, it certainly isn't perfect either.
It is also under scrutiny in the EU. Their antidote seems to be creating Alphabet and styling Google as an advertising company rather a search engine.
That said, I for one, think they haven't put out and succeeded with subpar products by the sheer force of their control over search (Google Plus, Google Buzz, ...).
Google has a monopoly in search (90% or more share) and they also control north of 60% of internet ad revenue, and they have a monopoly in browsers.
Google repeatedly has leveraged monopolies in one area to gain monopolies in other areas.
They also store tons of data on all of us, whether we want to use them or not. Since that data is not on devices we own, it is easy pickings for law enforcement to get ahold of as the traditional protections do not apply. If NSA or some government agency collected this data with so little oversight or protection, it would be outrageous. They wouldn't get away with saying "We promise not to be evil".
If Google cuts off service to you, good luck. You have little recourse.
Google enters markets, dominates them with a product, and then drops the product, destroying the market.
Google is also highly partisan, overwhelmingly backing a single political party. This is unhealthy to say the least.
Their position allows them to distribute their products to a larger audience, quicker than others for sure, but I don’t believe that’s a formula for success per se.
Successful products like Gmail, grew like a scrappy startup working on a great product would grow.
The first version Paul made was just a search engine for his own email. He then shared it with some friends/colleagues.
Gradually more features were added to improve the product and now we all have Gmail.
I’m sure the Google brand helped with distribution at some point later on, but users aren’t stupid. They pick the product they love using (unless they’re forced in an enterprise type of environment)
That's an objectively incorrect statement. It had:
1. 1GB storage when every other email provider offered like 50 MB at best
2. Superior search
3. Conversational/threaded view for emails
4. Better spam filtering
5. One of the first "dynamic" web applications to use that newfangled "AJAX" stuff to be more responsive and seem faster
Every other email provider was forced to start offering these features and now they seem commonplace. Reminds me of that old joke where someone goes to see a Shakespeare play and complains it was just one cliche after another.
1. _much_ better spam filtering
2. _much_ better searching
3. a _lot_ of storage (no need to delete old emails)
I'd say that its search-first paradigm to mail handling (and related to that, labels) was rather unusual at the time, and for the most part it still is.
Disclosure: I work at Google and get my regular exposure to GMail from there. I run and use my own mail server for everything that is not work.
Spam filtering on gmail has always been OK, but it was fine (for me) on other products for many years before gmail came out. I doubt it was much of a differentiator, but who knows? Maybe the #1 provider before gmail really sucked at it or something.
I think part of the problem with our current framing of what is "anti-competitive" or "monopolistic" focuses on consumers. A classical monopolist artificially limits supply and drives up prices to maximize profits (see, for example, the business practices of Standard Oil). That's completely orthogonal to Google's business model for two reasons:
1) For consumers, most products have no downward mobility in price from competition. The search is already free (ie. literally the lowest price possible). How can something be bad for consumers if it's free? Similar things can be said of gmail, maps, etc. 2) Google doesn't limit supply of its products within reasonable use (when's the last time you got a communication from Google demanding you do fewer searches?)
I think the question you should perhaps ask is "when we consider regulating behavior of large firms, is regulation that's good for consumers actually good for society?"
Earlier comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18436387#18436772
I'm liking Lina Kahn's take:
https://www.yalelawjournal.org/note/amazons-antitrust-parado...
I think we don't yet have a good vocabulary to describe the kind of bad behavior we see in large tech firms. People use "monopoly" because it's the first word that comes to mind when a large firm is acting badly, but Google's/Facebook's/etc behavior does not fit our current definition.
That's a longer story.
The rest of the world is more easily bought and paid for by Google lobbying because every Politician needs to use Google Ads+YouTube Ads+Android Apps to get elected.
EDIT: Here's one more useful link - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Google
The other complaints, the "right to forget" legislation had similar scummy people behind it. Politicians that had committed fraud on multiple counts and wanted to hide this.
That pretty much leaves the android case ... I don't know too much about that, I must say. I might add that android is not entirely free for device manufacturers. Probably cheaper than any other option, yes, but not free.
https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-fi-tn-apple-google-co...
I'd say Google used to be a whole lot better.
> but what exactly are (if any) examples of Google showing anti-competitive behaviour?
Chrome:
- how they push it (massive advertising, bundling etc)
- how they use their massive web properties to make other browsers look bad
Search, Chrome, YouTube, Maps, Gmail, Android, Google+.
And it frequently ties these to requirements.
Data.
Data.
The only reason Google has anything they have is their data and their user lock in.
The software and culture are nice, as are the lunches. But seriously, their data is the only thing that keeps them from becoming one player among many.
The "google is a monopoly" trope was introduced and cultivated by Steve Ballmer's Microsoft and it's being constantly adopted and revised by anyone with an axe to grind.
Using DeBeers as an example (from the Wikipedia article on monopoly), they could be argued to not have a monopoly, because diamonds are a sliver of the gifting market.
Search ads isn't the only way to reach people and it's not an impediment for new entrants as shown by Amazon's ad business.
As for the general matter, google has the right to publish and design their website however they see fit, it's a no brainer, the only reason this question keeps popping up is that google has very powerful enemies in basically all news and publishing companies (they blame it for their dwindling ad revenue), not to mention the oracles and yelps of the world and all of them are piggybacking on the infrastructure laid down by microsoft at the time.
Also can you give me an example of a true monopoly as per your definition. Even the US government doesn’t have a tax monopoly because there are other countries you can live in.
As for proper monopolies it's usually the power/water utilities, although I think that the breakup of at&t back in the day was ill advised because their monopoly sustained bell labs, possibly the greatest innovation hub ever, that being one example of these populist antitrust notions backfiring.
Does that answer your question?
Yes in more than one area. The lowest hanging fruit (which will cause downvotes): Google Play. No one can release anything Google disagrees with on Google Play.... but google could. Google and Apple really should be separated from their stores. They know everything that happens on them and no one can compete against that.
Bundling Chrome with Android (and Apple apps in iOS) is no different than Microsoft bundling IE or Windows media player.
Firefox and later Chrome continued to rise because they were faster, extendable and more open, not because Microsoft has to offer a browser selection in some markets.
Recent Android versions made it ever easier to install apps without using the Play Store: I have F-Droid installed and whitelisted (so no warnings every time an apk appears), which required toggling a permission switch the system pointed out to me.
As for Chrome, apparently various vendors ship their own browser as default although it seems they still have to ship Chrome as alternative.
Yes I'm using it myself but how is that making Google Play less of a monopoly? F-droid can't sell apps on the play store without using Google.
"I can't sell my organic bananas at Walmart without dealing with Walmart"?
I can understand ideas that there shouldn't be a "default store" on devices. Or that Android's certification (whatever that is called) shouldn't require pre-installing the play store as only option. I may or may not agree with them.
But "I should be able to sell my wares at a store without dealing with its owner/operator" sounds strange to me.
So, they’re tying their market power in phone operating systems to their unrelated monopoly (duopoly?) in surveillance capitalism, and many peopfle unwillingly/unwittingly hand over their private information as a result.
If you consider the full suite of their products, you’ll find that all people that are on the internet (and some that are not) hand over such information, unwilling or not.
Btw. also the same Epic that paid a developer to pull their game off Steam and make it exclusive to the Epic store after the game had had lots of advertisement on the Steam store. That is twice Epic has abused one store to promote their own. They are even worse than Google. At least Google pretends not to be scummy.
But that is beside the point.