Comment by jjoonathan | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jjoonathan | Hacker News Reader

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Google has some very impressive moats, but the real question is how much protection they actually provide. Business-idea-space is super high dimensional. You can't just walk the perimeter and say "yep, the moat protects us from all viable routes of assault." Specifically, if all the valuable searches start going through Amazon how quickly can Gmail, Google Maps, Android, and Chrome make up the missing revenue?

Of the products you listed, Youtube is the only one that I think is really orthogonal in the sense that it could bring in significant revenue if google's core product were disrupted. Perhaps maps and docs as well, to a much lesser extent. Gmail and chrome exist in competitive enough market spaces that I don't see them being able to stand on their own at all.

It's the familiar old adage about backup systems: interdependencies lead to concerted failures. A nuclear reactor with 500 backup systems that all depend on having a stable electrical supply isn't safe at all.

Android could. If they spun that off into it's own company it would be worth tens of billions, minimum. It's headed toward a mobile OS monopoly. It would be difficult to overstate how valuable that is.

AdSense could as well. They roll that into 'advertising' but it has nothing to do with search or any of G's products - and it's a huge chunk of their advertising revenue. Even if search lost all of its marketshare overnight they would still bring in many billions every year via AdSense.

(AdSense is their ad network where they display ads on 3rd party sites, acting as a middleman between publishers and advertisers).

> Android could

I honestly don't know enough about the Android business to comment.

> AdSense has nothing to do with search

I think you're focusing far too much on the technology and not nearly enough on the power that comes with being king of search. What if Amazon or Facebook manage to come up with a truly compelling business offering that competes with the open internet (the former by controlling logistical infrastructure, the latter by controlling social infrastructure, and both by reducing payment friction)? A shift would happen where the purchase point moves from the "open internet" (which is really Google's walled garden) to Amazon/Facebook territory. Suddenly AdSense becomes less attractive than a Amazon/Facebook affiliate alternative and webmasters everywhere switch to the option that pays better.

I sincerely hope this doesn't happen, but I don't think it's particularly far-fetched.

> Android could. If they spun that off into it's own company it would be worth tens of billions, minimum.

That's tricky. Android's success depends heavily on phone vendors, and the vendors -- at least the large ones -- have only bet on Android because Google's control over it is relatively subtle. If Google tries to extract too much money off of Android, you'll see phone manufacturers forking it in a heartbeat.

Where will they go for services though?

Which would work for a version of two until they and everybody else realized Googles proprietary version is far superior, and they pay Google a licensing fee for every install, because they have no other choice.

I don't think Google is going to do that, they don't have to because Ads make them so much money, but they could.

This is just wrong. Android forks were never successful (see eg Amazon's fire phone) an will never be - the lock-in factor is incredible.

In the opposite direction, more and more customers want "pure" software and good hardware is increasingly available from many different manufacturers. Nokia arguably has made the best hardware and hardly sold any phones with WP because customers wanted Android. Google knows this and moves more and more parts from AOSP in its proprietary play framework because manufacturers are way more dependent on Android than Google is dependent on any single manufacturer (including Samsung).

This depends. If Google is able to run ahead of the others fast enough and have very compelling updates to force competitors to follow them, then yes, their grab on Android is still strong.

But my feeling from having looked at Android 5 (which is apparently superficial) is that Google still try to run fast, but there is not more any very compelling innovation to propose. So quite soon a normal two years old version of Android will be just good enough for manufacturers and users.

Then Android will still be the main player, but it will exist as multiple forks and Google will have to adapt and propose apps compatible with the most successful forks (just like they propose apps on Apple store).

Google's lock in is more about Google Play than about what is coming in Android. Basically as a manufacturer, if you don't play nice, then you don't get Google Play (or YouTube, or Gmail, or GMaps), which then means that your smartphone is just an expensive brick with no apps on it. iOS is special because it is popular and was here first. But do you see Google giving a shit about Amazon's stuff or about the Windows phone?

You know, i'm an Android user because of its openness, because of its ability to be forked, but Google practices a kind of lock-in that is very hard to escape. Basically everything they do is technically excellent, plus they end up dominating the underlying platforms.

Just because a past fork was shitty doesn't mean all future forks will be shitty. There were other issues aside from lock-in.

> Of the products you listed, Youtube is the only one that I think is really orthogonal in the sense that it could bring in significant revenue if google's core product were disrupted.

Not to be too picky, but instead of "orthogonal" independent would be better. Or independent does imply orthogonal, but orthogonal does not imply independent. Orthogonal does imply independent in the Gaussian case.

Good catch, I forgot that there was an actual definition of orthogonal that could apply under the circumstances.

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