Google+ Is Not The Underdog, It’s The New Internet Explorer | Hacker News Reader

Google+ Is Not The Underdog, It’s The New Internet Explorer

melvinmt.com

42 pointsmelvinmt30 comments

Of course, people say now, the situation with Google is very different. With Google, you have a choice. You can either use their products or not. But it’s not that simple when they offer superior products for free. You rely on them, because you often have to use one of their products, because Search, Maps or Gmail, to name a few, are all far more superior than what other competitors have to offer. And if there’s a new kid on the block they can’t compete with, they simply (try to) buy them to maintain their implicit monopoly position.

This is a very... interesting definition of monopoly and by interesting I mean "don't be surprised if people disagree with your conclusions when you are re-defining a crucial concept, monopoly, to fit your argumentation". Every single Google service has a ton of competition, even Search, and you can migrate to these anytime you want.

The fact that Facebook is used as a example of a non-monopoly because people aren't relying on it, is a humorous non sequitur and obviously false. Lots of companies rely on Facebook as the single largest social network through which they do most of their marketing and community outreach. Does that make Facebook a monopoly? Well...

The entire argument pretty much hinges on this broken definition of a monopoly. If others are competing but Google is simply offering superior products, that sounds like a fair competition where Google is simply doing very well. If anything, it's a monopsony in the talent pool (Microsoft did also have enormous hiring power at its pinnacle, but that is generally thought to have been a consequence of its status as an abusive monopoly rather than the cause).

Agreed, isn't this what capitalism is supposed to get us? Competition for lower prices and better products? Saying "Sorry, your products are too good and you're offering them for too low of a price" kind of kills innovation, doesn't it?

You rely on them, because you often have to use one of their products, because Search, Maps or Gmail, to name a few, are all far more [sic] superior than what other competitors have to offer.

This is a refreshingly original critique. We should shun Google because they create an "implicit monopoly" of quality products?

When and if they start shoving crapware down our throats with the force of a real monopoly we can entertain this analogy.

People incorrectly give Google credit for quality when it's not deserved. There are very few products that Google makes that would survive in the "real" marketplace if they weren't free and not subsidized by their search revenue.

Google Docs/GMail/Calendar is not even in the same ballpark as Microsoft Office in terms of quality. ChromeOS is pretty bad compared to any version of Windows. Android isn't nearly as good as Windows Phone 7. Google just undercuts everybody with free products in a some sort of "burn down the forrest" strategy.

What's a "real" marketplace? Actually, I don't think it matters because millions of businesses pay for Google Apps, the packaged version of their office suite [1].

[1] http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/customers/

How many of these businesses would buy Google Apps for the same or more than what Microsoft Office + Exchange costs? That's how I judge quality. And I can pretty much guarantee that few, or none of those businesses would choose Google Apps over Office at the same price points. And more importantly the revenue Google did receive wouldn't cover the costs of running the Google Apps infrastructure. It would be a terrible business if run independently.

My point is people say Google's products are higher quality, but the marketplace says otherwise.

The best selling Android phones are no cheaper than Windows phones, yet customers seem to be happy to pay real money for them. GMail can easily compete on quality with any mail client at any price. Many businesses are quite willing to pay for Google docs. Chrome is gaining market share because it's better than anything else. Google's crappy products have met with the failure they deserved.

Google is the only tech giant that doesn't see tech as a zero-sum game and this scares the shit out of the old guard. The louder they scream and point fingers the more obvious it is how threatened they are by a competitor that's willing to compete on open standards.

A marketplace doesn't have to include an exchange of currency in order to be "real".

I'm not sure I understand the parallels to IE and Windows for that matter. Maybe this insight:

> You rely on them, because you often have to use one of their products, because Search, Maps or Gmail, to name a few, are all far more superior than what other competitors have to offer.

He speaks as if this is a bad thing. IE is an inferior product. If a monopoly provides superior products than who really cares? Monopolies are only bad for economies when they limit supply, price discriminate, use predatory pricing, etc. None of those things happen with a free service.

IE is inferior now. Compared to the alternatives, IE6 was fantastic when it was released.

...which was in 2001, after the Browser Wars were long over:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Browser_Wars.svg

Article summary:

1.Google creates monopoly by offering superior web(!) products for free

2. Facebook is at disadvantage because it does not allow Google to crawl its pages and this is Google's(!) fault.

How come such absurd article is third item on HN? (edit: grammar)

How come such absurd article is third item on HN? (edit: grammar)

It is becoming increasingly clear that Google+ is ushering something fundamentally different. Lot of people, hackers especially are very keen on understanding the implications and predicting where Google+ will go from here. And it is human nature to try and relate new things with analogies to stuff we have understood and internalized well. Hence the slew of articles comparing it to Facebook, Twitter, now IE and god knows what else. People here, my guess is, would be interested in anything that articulates a new perspective on Google+.

Let me see if I get the chain of analogies right: Facebook is to Google as Netscape was to Microsoft. Google built Google+ to destroy Facebook the way Microsoft built IE to destroy Netscape. (Assuming the analogy is sound, Facebook is toast, but I digress.)

Let me suggest that Facebook is the AOL of social media -- it tries to lock in customers by providing a bunch of simplified features that are available in better forms elsewhere if you know where to find them. (Don't use email, use Facebook messages. Don't make websites, make Facebook pages. Etc.) In this analogy, The Internet (of which Google+ is a part) is to Facebook as The Internet is to AOL. (Again, if the analogy is sound, Facebook is toast.)

Oh, and if Facebook is Netscape, does that make Myspace Mosaic?

Struck me that the title was written first and then the article was any filler that came to mind. The analogy to IE wasn't substantiated or even explained at all.

I'd almost bet this guy is a former SEO manipulator. They're the ones crying the most about Google.

Seconded!

Two stupid arguments right at the top. People using google instead of passing urls doesn't make google the internet. Facebook Pages are more the internet than that. Most sites are shared via links online, not vague spoken search terms offline. Even if this were true, it would make google the dns system, not the network.

Google is not responsible for gmail's wild success. The crappiness of its competitors is. Mainly Microsoft's refusal to abandon the rich client model and make hotmail competitive. And Yahoo's general uselessness of course. Don't look at a road in Britain and say "why does everyone have a BMW?!" as if it might be BMW's fault. It's not - it's Audi's fault for being boring or Mercedes for charging too much. A company can control a big market share because people LET THEM.

I think the analogy was stated poorly. Here's my take:

1. Big company A sees small company B getting rich off a new market. A forsees B disrupting A. With MS, it was the fear that the web would become the OS. With G it's that social will become the web.

2. A builds a copy of B's product and gives it away while tying it into their main product line. A's main competency can subsidize it. In the G/Fb case, G+ won't need a cut of developer revenue or to show ads.

3. B can't compete and folds. Now that A is dominant in that space it pulls resources from its product back to its main competency. The space stagnates for years. This hasn't happened yet with G/Fb of course, but I don't doubt that G will lose interest in social as soon as they feel safe.

The "customer" is the person giving you money. We aren't Google's customers; we're the product. An online advertiser is nearly as unable to avoid buying from Google in 2011 than a PC manufacturer was unable to avoid buying from Microsoft in 1998. Google giving away Android for free to create a moat around their core advertising product is exactly analogous to Microsoft giving away the browser for free to create a moat around their core OS product. These are not new observations, but people either don't understand or don't care. After all, most of us have the reasonable perception that we're getting excellent products for free.

Disclaimer: I work for the Evil Empire in Redmond.

I think there's a critical difference between using a product due to familiarity (which is intrinsic with IE given the fact that it was here first) and using a product due to ubiquity and usefulness. One could say the latter is perhaps even scarier than the former - at least the formemr is a matter of habit as opposed to a lack of choice.

Strangely encouraging analogy. Microsoft is still a hugely dominant player, but eventually new technologies caused their lead to erode and other, more innovative companies like Google started leading the pack.

If you're tired of Google-as-platform, just wait a few years.

Google+ is the new Internet Explorer? No, it is not. Nothing in the article proves any similarity between them. The "definition" about monopoly is absurd, how could to build a free and better product be monopoly?

Mirror? The site is down.

Too bad it was not down when I clicked the link. The content was not worth the time at all.

Indeed, the server is smoking already.

Fatal error: Out of memory (allocated 15728640) (tried to allocate 122880 bytes) in /home/melvinmt/domains/melvinmt.com/public_html/wp-includes/nav-menu-template.php on line 224

Working on it, didn't expected this much traffic.

You posted it on HN :-P.

Slap some varnish in front of that thing :-)

Had to reboot my server 4 times, before I finally got to install WP-Cache hehe. Hope it holds for now :)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com