> It’s amazing how they have four monopolies and only monetize one of them.
They appear to me to have begun monetizing google maps. And it is awful.
They appear to me to have begun monetizing google maps. And it is awful.
I might be biased, because I live in one of the cities with the updated maps data, sure, but I find that it handles most of my use cases just as well as Google Maps.
The search is still not great compared to Google Maps, though.
- no public transport routing where I live
- much worse satellite images
For all other uses, especially usability, it's superior to the extremely slow and cumbersome Google Maps. Both have odd UI bugs.
People like to conflate being popular (having large marketshare) with being a monopoly (exclusive control of supply). Being popular in those markets is likely because they do not monetize it directly.
Is not the only, nor even the most useful, definition of a monopoly. And there's also not a magic moment where one second you're not a monopoly, and the next second you are when user X+1 signs up. It's a gradual process and that's why it is such a huge area of law.
- Monopoly = Exclusive control of supply
- Monopsony = Exclusive control of demand
If you want to redefine it to popular things, you should reflect on your motivation to do so.
Though technically they also have YouTube and do monetize it.
A bunch of people have listed Gmail on their lists, but Gmail is not even close to a monopoly, even in consumer email. https://email-verify.my-addr.com/list-of-most-popular-email-...
- that's from 2016
- that seems to be worldwide (I see for example swiss and french providers in the list), which isn't necessarily relevant. Gmail can be a monopoly in the US for example, while not being one worldwide.
Unfortunately I cannot find better numbers, if someone does that would be interesting to discuss.
While I'm sure we could disagree on if Google actually has a monopoly in these domains, I think it's obvious they have a _substantial_ foothold.
Search, Maps, Gmail, YouTube
Chrome is arguably a monopoly if you segment desktop web traffic, but iOS Safari is such a large percentage that Safari can't be ignored.
People will disagree with email - but I challenge you to go look at email threads you're on and see what % of the emails are @gmail.com - not to mention G Suite addresses you don't know are Gmail. Outside of enterprise, there's no alternative.
Not bad either that Android and Chrome are duopolies at this point.