Search is Google's castle, everything else is a moat. | Hacker News Reader

Search is Google's castle, everything else is a moat.

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40 pointsdave161923 comments

The moat and scorched-earth metaphor also describes Microsoft's development of Internet Explorer. IE was given away to protect the economic castle of desktop development. Incompatibilities delayed and added expense to web development for decades, all to defend Windows and Office sales.

That doesn't really go hand in hand with my recollection. If i remember correctly Internet Explorer actually was the far better browser then Netscape at least once IE6 got released. But it is possible that Microsoft's refusal of continuing to develop its browser has had the effect you mention and has hindered the web overall from developing into an alternative to desktop apps.

Of course! If you give a crappy browser away for free, nobody will use it. However, if you make it good but you don't support Netscape's server-side integration, you kill their server business and their browser business.

Then after they implode rewriting Netscape, you pull almost everybody off the project and rake in the billions.

Until, inexorably, people work around your cruft and release cross-browser libraries that eliminate the "lock-in effect" of websites that require IE. Now you scramble to put people back on it and start active development again.

I think the point about the moat and scorched earth stands. For a very direct comparison, consider Android. I believe Google are trying to make it superior to iOS, even through they give it away. Their plan is to scorch the earth so that neither Microsoft nor Apple can turn mobile devices into a Google-free browsing device.

>Until, inexorably, people work around your cruft and release cross-browser libraries that eliminate the "lock-in effect" of websites that require IE.

And also that they recover from the rewrite and released and marketed Firefox enough to make it real competition to IE.

Microsoft was just hedging their bets. Development of IE was specifically to take Netscape down. Once they had won a majority of the web browser market they put it into Windows-style "churn" mode, where they release new garbage versions without any innovations or improvements.

To be more precise, they tied IE development to Windows and forced on mostly adding features like the pop-up blocker and improving security, resulting in IE6 SP2 being only part of XP SP2.

Actually, The castle-and-moat analogy is much better for Microsoft.

Microsoft's biggest cash cow is Office but Office isn't enough of "natural monopoly" that Microsoft can sit easily enjoying the profits. Instead, one can find a long list of the underhanded tactics MS has used to preserve it's position over the years.

Search, on the other hand, currently does seem like a natural monopoly a la electric companies and phone companies. That is, Google doesn't have to destroy the competition but rather they are reasonably well protected by the immense cost and organizational challenge involved in a creating direct competitor.

I think it's correct that Google other efforts are protective but they're protective towards the situation of open competition in which Google arose - protective against pipe-squeezers and walled-garden cultivators.

Google is more like a "Mongol Hoard". Their defense isn't building moats and walls but clearing brush and obstacles so "everyone" has a open, level field - that Google just happens charge through more effectively than anyone else.

I dunno if I'd call search a natural monopoly at all -- Office has file formats and other forms of lock-in. Search just has a URL.

I'm with you on that one. I've never understood it when people say that Google has a monopoly as powerful as Microsoft or Facebook. If a Facebook user finds a social network that's better than Facebook, tough luck. The value of Facebook is that their friends are on it so they can't switch to another social network. If a Windows user discovers an operating system that's better than Windows, tough luck if you rely on any applications that only run on Windows. If a Google user discovers a better search engine then switching is the easiest thing in the world. The main barriers to entry that exist around Google search are that search is really hard to do, not that Google have some kind of lock in that makes it hard to change search engines.

I really like joe_the_user's Mongol Hoard analogy. Google aren't scorching the earth or building a moat or otherwise erecting barriers to entry around search. With Android, for example, they are attempting to ensure that no fortifications can be built on the surrounding land. That's a very different thing.

A rewrite of this: http://abovethecrowd.com/2011/03/24/freight-train-that-is-an... (he even used the same picture!)

I think "rewrite" is too gentle. this kind of plagiarism would get you kicked out of school or fired from any reputable media company...

He references, links and quotes that post: "Benchmark Capital VC Bill Gurley reminds us how good this trick is in an excellent post..."

(The original article is definitely better than the TC summary.)

"Remember, what is the default search engine of Android and Chrome? It’s Google."

Actually every time I've installed Chrome it has given me a choice of search engines. Maybe he meant Chrome OS? I don't recall choosing a search engine the first time I booted up my CR-48.

Edit: Here's what it looks like for the doubters http://imgur.com/dobse

I don't remember Chrome giving a choice. But I guess it's possible that it is one of the configuration options, and I just do what almost everyone does: click next without looking at it. The article's point still stands.

I remember it giving me a choice. So the article's point does not stand, since it is not true that the default SE of Chrome is Google.

If you've been using chrome since a long time you haven't seen it. I think they introduced it right before their marketing push in Europe...

This is almost right. Right in one sense.

But in a more expansive sense, I read a great quote from some higher-up at Google a year back that really put things in perspective..

He said, "Look, over 50% of the Internet uses Google for search, conservatively speaking. So if we make the Internet better in a general, altruistic sense, and create 2 new internet users, we just created a Google user."

So it's a more positive gesture than the denial-based moat metaphor or 'scorched earth' language imply. (The moat metaphor made me think of IE vs Netscape).

Advertising is Google's castle. Search is also in the moat.

Then again, the quality of Google's moat is often better than other companies' castle.

Also, Google doesn't so much 'ravage industries', it innovates in them. Which can be the same. The industrial revolution 'ravaged industries' too.

This made me think of the olden days when countries waged war for natural progression of the country. I guess its a good analogy for how we progress as a life form. Instead of killing people to get what we want, companies wage war to get what they want. Same aggression and reasons, different tactic.

When do you think Facebook will enter search?

Not until well after their IPO and the bubble bursts on the absurd 40, 50, 75 billion-dollar valuations we're seeing now, IMO. Entering search actually brings on some risk, because if they screw it up, or if it doesn't take, a lot of Facebook's future equity goes up in smoke.

It already did. In fact, it has from the beginning. You can search Facebook. If you want a paradigm, Facebook = AOL in the sense that it's a walled garden.

On the one hand, Google doesn't need to make any money from these moats. They can all be loss-leaders defending search. (Eventually this will raise antitrust issues but usually only long after the damage is done.)

On the other, perhaps once the 'scorched earth' field is cleared by Google's search-revenue subsidized entries, Google's remaining entries will turn out to be capable of becoming giant profitable businesses on their own.

So there's two ways for Google to win: defending search, or discovering the next bonanza in a field where all scalable competition was decimated by search-subsidies.

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