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What was the last Google product that was successful without heavy bundling? In this case, bundling couldn't overcome Facebook's network effects.

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Gmail likely could have stood alone as a product (that is, I don't think it required promotion on google.com). It was a tremendous innovation at the time, on both interface, usability, and storage capacity. It leapfrogged hotmail by 100 fold on storage.

Apr 2004 [1]

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gmail

I have no idea what that is supposed to mean. Or what it has to do with what I said.

I've been a user of Gmail since it entered beta. What's your point exactly?

If you have something to say, say it, don't be smug by linking to a wikipedia entry for Gmail, as though I don't already know what year it was created.

His not so subtle point is that it's been 10 years since Gmail, and if that was the last successful non-bundled product, that was a long time ago.

> I have no idea what that is supposed to mean. Or what it has to do with what I said.

Look at the comment you replied to:

> When was the last time ...

You brought up a VERY old product and he called you out.

You know, if its a list of one item, its not really a list, so there is no need to pretend to footnote. This silly over-use of citation markup when it is completely unneeded adds to the smarmy faux-studiousness of comments on HN.

Just say Apr 2004, according to Wikipedia, was a long time ago. Don't pretend to use extra markup, don't imply a list of citations where there isn't one, and don't make a sentence for a human look like its been formatted for a computer.

If you're so concerned about the waste of space represented by two "[1]"s, why'd you waste so much space typing this?

>if its a list of one item, its not really a list

unless you're a programmer.

Yes. If you're a programmer, even lists with zero elements shouldn't bother you.

I guess that would depend on your definitions of "product", "successful" and "heavy". Realistically if they are in a position to leverage any bundling - why wouldn't they?

But here goes, in no particular order...

Google Public DNS - Dec 2009

Chromecast - July 2013

Chromebook - June 2011

Chrome Browser - Sept 2008

ChromeOS - May 2012

Nexus 4,5,7,10 - various starting Jan 2010

Golang - 2009

Dart - 2011

AngularJS - 2009

app engine - April 2008

Because leveraging bundling is illegal, if the bundled item is a monopoly, in both the US [1] and the EU. Further, leveraging their search monopoly in such a way as to juice other products is to the detriment of users: if the product deserves a given space in the search results (where deserves means would rise there without bundling), it should rise there on its own, or there is a better alternative that should have been there instead. Hence user harm.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_antitrust_law

Would anyone really consider AppEngine successful? I hear so many support horror stories, only one poorly supported open source project to try to move off to without recoding to different APIs, and the price is ridiculous compared to other cloud providers...

At the very least, it's successful for Google, since they appear to be making some money from it.

Depends on whether you consider Android a Google product or not.

Do you believe android succeeded w/o juicing from other google businesses? I don't, I think.

The forced bundling of gmail, calendar, and maps (w/ turn-by-turn) where critical to android's success imo. Though I'd be curious for an argument otherwise.

The claim would have to be that Google couldn't have used any other alternatives. I believe that to be obviously false. Of course the market would have happily supplied options for mapping, calendar, and email - all Google would need to do is ask, or leave it open for users to decide regardless.

What was the alternative to iOS? There was nothing, only Android. That was true right up to the point where Microsoft rebuilt Windows mobile. iOS was not going to own 95% of the market no matter what Apple did, if only because people want to own different phones for fashion purposes. Android's strategy, plus an open market of app alternatives to the bundled software, you get the same result.

Hardware manufacturers needed something as close to an iOS clone as reasonable without literally duplicating it, and that's what Android was.

It's an opinion, of course, but I disagree. I think Android would have done just fine without google apps. Indeed plenty of android phones are sold without them. If the Amazon Fire fails, it will be because there are already cheaper phones with bigger app stores, not because it doesn't have gmail.

Where are there any android phones sold w/o google apps besides an estimate of 35K Amazon Fire phones, and china?

"and china"

why are you excluding China? A few hundred million of Android phones without Google services isn't enough of a proof that Android is a great product even without Google services?

edit: add source: http://techcrunch.com/2014/03/13/china-now-has-700m-active-s...

It's a weird market for political reasons, including the chinese government's attempt to grow domestic software and industries. Partly due to this, they're not really part of the same internet market as anyone else -- notice how all of china's big internet companies are home grown. So I don't think it's really proof of much.

Is this not the case?

Well, now that's an entirely different question. "Would Android have worked without google apps?" versus "Can a stripped version of Android compete with an entrenched Google Apps version of Android." Big difference. Either way, the lack of access to Google Play apps hurts Amazon Fire a lot more than lack of bundling with any previous Google services.

> succeeded w/o juicing from other google businesses?

Now you're changing the terms of the question ... getting a a boost from other businesses is different from "bundling". You didn't get sent an Android phone, nor in any way forced to use one, when you signed up for Gmail, or started using Youtube. Those services were very nicely supportd on the iPhone before the first Android phone ever launched. If you're going to say any positive association at all counts then they've never produced a an independent product since the original Google search, but that's not a very interesting statement - why would they launch something new and not make it work with their phones? It would be stupid and actually put them at a competitive disadvantage compared to the iPhone.

How is bundling different than getting a boost? I really think they're the same.

And google made the services work better on their phone (eg turn-by-turn navigation, better gmail app).

Bundling of a product means that you are forced to buy it even though you don't want it, to get a different product from the same provider that you do want. So your cable provider won't sell you HBO on its own, you have to take 20 other channels you have no interest in. It is not bundling of Android because you can get Google search, GMail, etc. all without Android. There is no other product that Google sells where they force you also to take Android in order to get it. You can make the reverse argument - that Google Search, GMail, etc. are bundled with Android. But that is bundling of GMail, Search, etc, not bundling of Android.

I wanted a big-screen phone that I could run my own apps on and put them on the web for other people to download (without needing to buy a mac to develop on, or pay apple for a developer certificate). Something to replace my PDA (an ASUS A730W running windows mobile 2003 - still quite a nice device but my phone now does everything it did). The Google integration made very little difference to the appeal; I might well have gone for a windows phone if they hadn't been in a process of multiple incompatible OS rewrites, or one of the Nokia Linux phones if they hadn't been a total mess. For me at least, Android was just in the right place at the right time.

I think you're misunderstanding the term "forced bundling" here.

The forced bundling being opposed here is that people who just want to use YouTube, Google Talk or Gmail are forced to get Google+ accounts and create Google+ profiles.

If you want to use Google Maps, Gmail, Calendar, you're not forced to buy an Android phone. They work fine on the desktop and they even support apps on iOS.

> The forced bundling of gmail, calendar, and maps (w/ turn-by-turn) where critical to android's success imo. Though I'd be curious for an argument otherwise.

People wanted smartphones that didn't cost an arm and a leg. That's the basis of Android's success. The Google apps are a nice to have.

Google Maps

Feb 2005 [1]

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Maps

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