Slashdot Mirror
Google's Continued Growing Pains
eldavojohn writes "The Mercury News is reporting that Google's 500 percent growth since its IPO hasn't come without a cost. With the purchase of DoubleClick, Google is facing antitrust charges in both the United States and the European Union. And with their rising success, there are open source alternatives springing up."
I think this article is misleading. They talk about the antitrust investigation into Google's acquisition of DoubleClick... caused by:
... hypothetical. Wake me up when you have an actual search engine or advertising model. In the meantime, let Google buy DoubleClick. If they fail to deliver on either front, there are plenty of competitors who will willingly accept all their dissatisfied customers.
Complaints that "publishers might fear that if they did not deal with Google, their ranking in Google's search engine might be affected"
In other words:
Before Google ever drops my search ranking because I cancelled my DoubleClick subscription, I'm going to spread FUD about this hypothetical possibility, and insist the Government shut them down.
There is also the typically worries about privacy after Google knows not only what you search for, what AdWords you click on, but now what DoubleClick Banners and Pop-Ups you click on too. And they talk about some of Google's competitors, trying to find the next Google killer. They think Wikia and OpenAds will be more open-source (Google's PageRank is a "closely guarded secret") and won't collect any consumer information.
It's all just so
Yeah, I'm sure that the reason companies have been pouring billions and billions of dollars into advertising for decades isn't that it works, but that nobody even though to check.
I'd say these 'growing pains' appear rather similar to the challenges faced by any corporation of similar size. Potential mergers with companies in the same field being investigated by the FTC? Welcome to the Fortune 100. Open source alternatives as a 'threat' to ubiquitous name recognition and >50% market share? Yep, that's a truly pressing problem most tech companies would love to face. Difficulties sustaining rapid growth when your market cap exceeds $150B?
Well, yes, it's difficult to grow rapidly when you're valued at over 1/400th of the gross world product. Pick a bigger planet next time, perhaps?
Honestly, did this article really say anything insightful or unusual? If it did, I missed it...
"We have to go forth and crush every world view that doesn't believe in tolerance and free speech." - David Brin
We would be inclined to view antitrust charges as a "nice to have" type of problem.
Apparently Yahoo! is catching up to Google, at least in terms of customer satisfaction, so I really don't think Google's dominance in search is that big of a deal. In advertising, maybe, but that's why the FTC and EU are looking into possible antitrust violations ... nothing particularly special there. Now, if they actually stopped the merger because of antitrust violations, THEN that's news. Until then, it's just hypothetical bullshit and dreams.
The article does manage to make on good point, though, which is that sooner or later the market would manage to break Google's (hypothetical) monopoly. Heck, there's already countless startups all hoping to displace Google. Google does not come close to enjoying the dominance that Microsoft once did, which is why all this concern about Google shutting out the competition seems premature, at best.
Yeah, and apparently it's led by someone that understands that the way to a continued successful growth is to be nice to your employees, to treat your customers with respect, and well, generally Do No Evil. Everyone understands that they want to make money. It's no charity. What makes them different from virtually every other major IT company out there is that people don't hate them, which is why, whenever there's talk about Google, the Do No Evil mantra comes up.
c++;