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I just realized that Google won on search the way Apple has won on smartphones. They control the full stack -- frontend, relevance, indexing, advertising -- and tightly couple these pieces. Inktomi couldn't control the user interface the way Google can't really control the interface on Android.

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You are right, but IMO you miss the real point. Both Google's search and Apple's iPhone were about delivering a wholly satisfying product/service, and controlling the whole stack was needed to do that for those cases. This is not always true (though it often is).

Yeah, it's pretty hard to know when it is and isn't. Vertical integration is as old as business.

Of course, Google's search was about that, while the iPhone still is. And the iPhone has been improving a lot faster than Google's search.

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