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Google Claims They "Just Aren't That Big"
The New York Times is reporting that Google is making the case that they just aren't that big, especially from an anti-trust point of view. While they certainly corner the market in search, advertising, and online video, Dana Wagner, Google's "senior competition counsel," is working hard to convince the public that "competition is a click away." "None of the investigations take aim at Google's core advertising business. And unlike other technology giants in years past, Google has not been accused of anticompetitive tactics. But the investigations and carping from competitors and critics have Google fighting to dispel the notion that it has a lock on its market, even as it increases its share of search and online advertising. Eyes are rolling, especially in reaction to the idea that Google is a relatively small player in a giant market. 'They describe where they are in a market under a kind of a fairy-tale spun gloss that doesn't reflect their dominance of key sectors,' said Jeff Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy. 'Google search is an absolute must-have for every marketer in the world.'"
Hi! Billy Mays here for GIANTCo.
Do you suffer from a lack of competition in your market place? Are your closest competitors light-years away from being a viable alternative to the solutions you offer? Well have I got just the thing for you! Introducing the amazing, the lovely, the Department of Justice! That's right folks, in just 10 easy years you can get a slap on the wrist and be deemed a monolopy.
But wait, there's more! What if I told you that if you called right now, we'd throw in a second DOJ fine ABSOLUTELY FREE?!?!
Call now, operators are standing by.
Sent from your iPad.
It's better than having a software monopolist tying their awful search engine into all their products and becoming number one.
Slow Down Cowboy!
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But, but... I almost had first post!
They only dominate the market because of one thing.
They made a search engine that works and doesn't piss everyone off with flashing blinking ads everywhere!
Did google do anything to make all the other search engines suck ass? No.
Did google buy out the competition so they were #1? No.
Google just made a good service people CHOOSE to use.
They might still be subject to antitrust issues if they're dominant in a particular market, but the statement that they "aren't that big" does seem objectively true, by most measures other than public fame.
Some major tech companies by number of employees:
And by revenue:
And by net income:
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Heck, I've got lots of 'em.
Your market cap is $134 billion to put this into perspective IBM's is $139 billion and Microsoft's is $211 billion.
... you are a big dog. If you're pulling in more than a billion per quarter in sheer profit, you're going to lose that argument. Money is more important than number of employees when you're relating to other companies.
You may well employ far fewer than either of those two giants, but you aren't "running with the big dogs" now
My work here is dung.
the Register has an article up today entitled A Google monopoly today means packet sniffing tomorrow. Seems like the tech community has possibly learned from its past and may be a lot more hesitant to blindly support monopolies, no matter what their supposed "slogan" is.
We're huge.
A Magic the Gathering Article and Forum Aggregator
"competition is a click away."
Yeah, just type the word competition in the search field and click on the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
a must have? Then why is it that every one of my Korean friends say that Google isn't as popular in Korea, which has been confirmed by friends that have gone there to teach and returned, and that the primary search engine used is Naver? It is a little difficult to see what all Naver offers without understanding Korean, but if Naver was to offer an english variant of all the services it offers, it would be a strong competitor to Google.
While I agree with the statement that Google has not been anticompetitive AND with the statement that competition is "only a click away"*, Google does one thing that still makes them a large company on the order of Microsoft:
Google buys out the competition
Mergers and acquisitions are a matter of course for the technology industry. But when you build your portfolio by simply buying off the leader in a new market space, then you become a holding corporation. That's been the mark of Microsoft for two decades now and it's become the mark of Google as well. Google Groups (DejaNews), Google Docs (Writely), Youtube, Google Analytics (Urchin), Android, etc. all testify to this.
While I'll grant that Google adds their own spin to the products and often integrates them better than acquisitions made by many of their competitors, it still does not change the fact that Google purchases their markets. And that... that is a damning argument against their "we're not that big" statement.
* Ignoring the competitive advantage of Google's massive infrastructure for a moment.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don't_be_evil
They have certainly come a long way. They have become too big, powerful and evil. I have actually gone back to Yahoo, out of principle.
They are THAT big (that's what she said) but it's true that competition is just a click away. Apart from the obvious of just using another search engine, any documents you have on google docs can be converted properly to a lot of open source formats and you can leave. Social networking? Plenty of those. News aggregators? Plenty of those. Rss feeds? Plenty. Geolocation? Just throw on a tracker and use your own maps.
Really, there's nothing google does that can't be done by anyone else. They just do it damn well.
Fuck you microsoft and other motherfucking disable-fucking-copy-paste-if-licence-expires Office counterparts, THAT is anti-competitive, not google.
They are big but not that big. And as far as I can see they do nothing to keep others out of the market. And prices are still quite good. Hard to see an anti-competitive effects in this market. Anyone else can run a search engine and nothing is stopping anyone from using it.
Remember when Google was just the engine behind Yahoo? And then people just started going to Google.
And guess what? I can set my homepage to anything I want.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
Whenever I hear that in the context of a blind date, its time to run.
Have gnu, will travel.
Google: "Googlee-uh penis-ah vely smarr. Amelican Govelnment penis-ah so big... sooo big."
Caveat Utilitor
Mr. Wagner, not surprisingly, takes issue with the image of Google as unshakable monopoly. Google achieved its market position by offering superior products and could quickly be dethroned if it stops innovating, he said.
This is likely true of any internet-based company. If the clicks stop coming Google would quickly become Altavista. Gmail would become Pegasus. Time will march right on by and the 'hot and new' will become 'ancient', just as it has in the past.
Until Google reaches a point where it becomes virtually impossible to field a competing site successfully, I think the word 'monopoly' is a bit premature.
"We can't compete," may well be true, but that would not seem to be due to anything specific that Google is doing to stop us.
If you have to tell us that there is competition, then really there isn't any.
At least Google continues the bought-out product line, with something on-par with the original value. Many companies buy out a competitor to kill the product line.
Other companies, tech or otherwise, destroy the competition. For example, the automobile industry bought out & eliminated trolleys. Microsoft ate Sysbase.
Don't get me wrong. This is a monopolistic approach, but it doesn't destroy tech innovation. It just wrecks capitalism.
'They describe where they are in a market under a kind of a fairy-tale spun gloss that doesn't reflect their dominance of key sectors,' said Jeff Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy. 'Google search is an absolute must-have for every marketer in the world.'"
This makes me wonder, 1. Isn't "An absolute must-have" kind of the point of creating, promoting, and maintaining anything in a modern economy, and 2. SO WHAT?!?! Google, while a gargantuan entity in the Search and On-Line AD world, doesn't employ tactics that scream anti-trust to me just see http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=yahoo&aq=f&oq=&aqi=g10, I mean they link to their competitor's very prominently in their own search terms. Do you picture Mircosoft linking to Apple? Probably not.
I think people in general need to understand, that the more and more we attempt to stifle large companies, the more you are also stifling Innovation, which is the lifeblood of technological advancement. We need to be able to promote innovation without worrying people that their successes will be capped out as soon as some loser company decides to start rattling the anti-trust sabre at them. I think Google is a wonderful company, that has not only an excellant suite of products, but has also shown true innovation in a field dominated by innovation. They survived the dot-com bubble burst, they have an enormous philanthropic entity, and they provide their end-users with products that are not only top of the line, but in some cases even open sourced.
They should be lauded, not trampled by an outdated set of theories regarding anti-trust, since those same laws and regulations were set in place in a time period when competition WAS scarce, and the lack of communication and innovation technologies were lax at best. I highly dought we'll ever see another Big Oil, or Big Railroad, or Big Business again in the sense of the businesses that were around that spawned the need for such laws.
"This is the value of a summer spent and a winter earned"
OK, lets say Google is not that big, not evil but some people will be afraid from any company who has that kind of market share in information market.
So, people are a bit paranoid right? Human nature...
Why would that company ship a "updater" application/framework and code it in a way to run every 2 hours with (super user) Administrator powers on both Windows and OS X? Also, why wouldn`t it go away when all google apps removed? It is clear that you made the guy paranoid and guy got rid of all your software. You still push it by keeping the updater application (and its socket) open for 24 hours.
I hate to give Adobe as example but, even Adobe CS4 suite which people buy with their credit card, giving their phone and address to Adobe and pay more than thousand dollars runs updater application, in current user power only when the host applications (photoshop, reader etc) running.
I am speaking about paranoia here and it doesn`t really have to have a technical reason. People, especially Windows users are afraid of such behavior, ask any Windows developer out there. OS X users are not that paranoid yet but they are allergic to software needlessly using Admin powers. When OS X users ask, Google says "but our updater will also update kernel modules etc. in future", what a GREAT way to make guy totally nuts eh?
You really have a example in hand. Real Networks. Why repeat history? Also Real Networks isn`t running a huge search engine which easily finds personal data on web.
There is another company we should be looking at when it comes to anticompetitive and monopolistic behavior far before we even consider Google. We all know which company this is. For those of you completely oblivious to the past few decades, it is obviously Microsoft. There is not a day that goes by that I am not angry about their dominance in the computer industry. The disgusting nature of their rise to power and the fact that they have not stopped damaging the very industry I had fallen in love with when I was young makes me feel sick and drains my hope that this country is about freedom.
Anyone attacking Google needs to step back and seriously take another look at history. Success means nothing when you are inflicting serious harm to others and doing a bad job at what you are supposed to be doing in the first place. Microsoft and its cronies from the beginning had only one goal, power. This unfortunately came at the expense of holding back progress in the entire industry. Of course it is far more complicated, but overall, we all know the core of Microsoft is evil.
Will we ever see any serious action taken against Microsoft and its cronies? Or will another competitor to Microsoft be taking the fire?
Google is not big enough. And I hope some day they will be so that the Microsoft monopoly finally withers away.
Come on the guy only died yesterday.
http://www.billymays.net/
If I were God, wouldn't I protect my churches from acts of me?
What, has someone come up with a search engine that's better than altavista? Sorry, just getting up from a nap.
Loose lips lose spit.
I love how there's a Google Crome banner and ad on the page for this article.
On a more serious note, it is a bit ridiculous that they're saying they aren't a HUGE part of the market, but I can see their point of there being others (like Yahoo and MSN) that are also out there. They're exaggerating the Hell out of what they're saying, but there's at least SOME truth behind it.
A quick google search for "Big, Monopolistic Search Engines who crush competition" comes up with one response:
www.bing.com
Just as here, where the size, compared to the space to occupy, is the point. And in some areas, Google is the Internet equivalent of Photoshop's flood-fill tool.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
From my perspective, I use Google for search, free email and maps. Now if I ever got unhappy with Google, changing my bookmarks and creating another free email account somewhere and forwarding my gmail address there is really trivial. It doesn't inconvenience my life much at all.
Whereas, if I am running a given operating system, switching it is a colossal headache, even for someone moderately technically inclined. My own quest to move to Ubuntu has been a lengthy process.
I can't speak for those using their ad services, but I don't see that they are particularly deep into people's lives. Unless I'm mistaken.
Heck- Facebook is more of a concern to me- most of my friends have utterly abandoned email and chat and use FB exclusively.
Ditto 'Amazing' Mike Levey (passed away many years ago). It's actually astounding when you think about it.. these are TV salesmen, home shopping network talking heads, etc. (in addition to being private individuals, of course) Yet we encounter them so often just flipping channels, and are sometimes so taken in either by them or by the prospect of them trying to sell (typically) junk, that we are compelled to watch them and their image remains with us.
This is pretty true. Google destroyed altavista pretty quickly when altavista was the "cool" search engine out there.
This is my sig.
Fuck you microsoft and other motherfucking disable-fucking-copy-paste-if-licence-expires Office counterparts, THAT is anti-competitive, not google
I never thought of that... that's an awesome idea.
This is my sig.
The part of Google that actually makes money is surprisingly small. The search engine staff was under 100 people until a few years ago, and about fifteen of them did all the hard parts. AdWords has more people, plus a sizable sales staff. But it's not huge, and it's smaller since Google closed some of their branch sales offices. At peak, Google had around 20,000 employees. Two years ago, they had about 12,000, and they could profitably shrink back to that level. They've been dumping excess contract employees for the last year.
The labor-intensive parts are mostly in the money drains - YouTube, GMail, etc.
This ridiculous notion that a company can only grow "this" big or "this" successful without being tagged a monopolist, can only be held by a person without the slightest notion of what the word monopoly means. The Post Office has a monopoly. If you deliver mail you get arrested. The central bank has a monopoly. If you issue paper money you are imprisoned for counterfeiting. Now Google is NOT a monopoly. People can flock to Cuil, Bing, Webcrawler, Yahoo!, Altavista or whatever they think suits them better. If some of these other companies ( which were all around when Google came from out of nowhere and became this incredible service provider ) start getting their game together and Google drops the ball, they can become the dominant player. Or, who knows, some Searchster might come out of nowhere and leave Google eating dust.
Send your spendthrift head of state this
I find it funny how everyone is taking the deaths of Billy Mays vs Michael Jackson.
Jackson was an artist and a subversive while Billy Mays was a salesman!
Democracy reveals the American belief in subversion through stark contrast.
But jealousy and greed, human flaws which are implicit(according to American philosophy) and practically virtues! Billy was in contention for the greatest salesman of all time!
Oh shit, existential hypocritical crisis!
If people don' like google, DO NOT USE IT!!!! If the several other search sites can not give people what they want, it is not googles problem. Get over it...
Did they try Googling for alternatives to Google?
"The stupid neither forgive nor forget; the naive forgive and forget; the wise forgive but do not forget." -Thomas Szasz
Really, this is just Microsoft trying to throw everyone off their obvious continued anticompetitive monopolistic efforts. Get you focused on someone else and they have a greater chance of being able to do all those things they want and not getting caught.
Microsoft is just dancing around hoping someone will fall on their butt while having some modicum of relief while everyone looks at the one that fell down.
Google is not anticompetitive. There are no complaints that it is. This is much different than holding hostage the industry to create a monopoly. No one is alleging that Google has done anything of the sort. Everyone that doesn't like Google's way of doing things can just click and go to any of a number of other search engines.
People chose Google not because they had no choice, they chose them because they were/are the best at what they do; which is to bring traffic to your business.
Windows became what it is because people and suppliers felt they didn't have a choice, and Microsoft's criminal activities tied them down. Google has operated in the light of Microsoft's anticompetitive actions for the past 10 years and yet no one with oversight is claiming Google is anticompetitive or doing anything illegal.
Again, if you don't like Google then just find another search engine. It's not Google's fault that the other search engine doesn't perform for you.
And for goodness sake you don't let someone who's a convicted criminal testify that you are committing the same crime you did all the while competing for that same domain.
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
I mean, honestly, any one of us, given the willpower and time could develop an ad platform to compete with google's. The fact that no one has does not mean that it can't be done. Likewise, if someone is able to create a better search algorithm, it could overtake google search. There are a ton of video sites that compete with youtube as well. The fact is, no one holds a gun to anyone's head and says "USE THIS GOOGLE PRODUCT!" Now if google were to start making deals with all OEM's that their default search engine was google search, google docs was the default productivity package, chrome was the default browser, then maybe you would have a case. Ultimately, they are a big player, but they are not a monopoly.
In my mind, a business becomes a monopoly when they completely bar entry into a market. Google does not do this. There aren't going to be henchmen showing up at your door if you start making mysweetvideohostingsite.com. Now make something that competes directly with Microsoft? Or apple? Yeah, you might have to watch your back.
You must be a troll. In case you're serious.
He gave you facts clearly indicating they abused their monopoly position. You haven't refuted anything he said. What about the part where Microsoft put pressure on OEM's not to put anything other than IE?
You think it's just one incident, but Microsoft pulled the same shit with Java and Quicktime.
Get the facts before you open your mouth. You look like a Microsoft tool.
"The Post Office has a monopoly. If you deliver mail you get arrested."
Ever heard of FedEx?
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
Sure, as Search consumers you and I are freely able to choose one search engine over another, but are advertisers freely able to choose a competitor's ad platform over Google's? I mean, they could choose to not get eyeballs on ads, but that's not what they're in business to do.
When I first read this I thought "what aren't so big??"... my imagination ran...
Google is about to own a monopoly on all published books. This is a concern of anti-trust lawyers.
No, I will not work for your startup