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Comment by xaa | Hacker News Reader

Search, which provides the majority of Google's revenue, is precarious because there are very low costs for someone to switch to another service.

To combat this problem, Google started providing all these associated services -- Finance, Reader, Blogger, etc, etc -- so that people would begin to use their Google ID as a significant component of their online identity. These services were never supposed to be profitable, they were supposed to provide a competitive "moat" for search.

If people begin to take their data out of Google services -- which is the only rational response given Google's repeated and blatant disregard toward its "customers" -- these customers might start looking toward Bing and DDG very soon. Then Google will have a problem.

Even Android could have a problem if people begin asking the question, "what happens if/when Google sunsets Play? Will I still have access to my apps?"

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"Search, which provides the majority of Google's revenue, is precarious because there are very low costs for someone to switch to another service."

Google's dominance in search has nothing to do with customer switching costs. They are dominant because, imperfections and privacy issues aside, they legitimately have the best performing search engine on the market. They are able to retain this position because search is an extremely difficult and resource intensive technical problem (like mapping), that nobody has been able to credibly challenge them on since they took over.

If someone builds a better search engine than google, then yes, their position will be precarious, regardless of the other ways they've roped people in. But none of the current crop of competitors give any reason to believe this is imminent.

They built Gmail. People need it desperately. So far, no one distrusts it or has any reason to. That's their identity moat.

People don't need gmail. They need email. You know, that thing that existed for years before gmail.

To say people don't distrust google/gmail shows your naïveté and/or your rose coloured google glasses.

Search and the collaborative part of google docs (ie multiple concurrent editors on a document) is the only thing where it's hard to find a true competitor that you can self host, not to mention hosted solutions.

>People don't need gmail. They need email. You know, that thing that existed for years before gmail. To say people don't distrust google/gmail shows your naïveté and/or your rose coloured google glasses.

Aren't you a charmer.

I'm about as far from a Google fanboy as exists. Trust in this conversation has been about existing tomorrow or not. No one doubts Gmail is going to exist tomorrow.

And while you're right about the very obvious assertion that email existed before Gmail, that misses the point. There's a switching cost involved in changing your email. You have to inform all your contacts, update all of your accounts, learn a new web interface.

It's a damn good moat.

If you're using a gmail domain email, setup auto reply/forwarding for a few months/indefinitely.

Businesses would largely be using their own domains, so the point is moot.

If you forwards emails through gmail then Google still gets your data.

Only what doesn't go directly to your new email yet.

I used to think that way, back when I had a Yahoo account. Now, lots of people could clone GMail and I wouldn't switch, because it's a decent service and pretty sticky. But on those infrequent occasions when I encounter a product that's a Big Leap Forward, I just migrate.

Search is the moat for me. Switching email is not nearly as big of a deal.

I use gmail daily, many times, but I don't actually need gmail site. I rarely even go there. What I need is a free and reliable mail storage server that supports IMAP. I'll take it from there. Same with GReader - I need free and reliable feed aggregator, and then I'll use the tools to consume it.

I am sad Google is getting out of this market, since that brings me inconvenience of migration. But I'm sure the niche will be filled in.

The cost of switching may be low but familiarity is a powerful motivator to stay. We saw this with Office 2007 drawing so much ire despite the ribbon interface being quite good. We're seeing it again to an extent because of the don't-call-it-Metro interface in Windows 8.

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