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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.'"
It's better than having a software monopolist tying their awful search engine into all their products and becoming number one.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
How about market cap?
$134 billion for Google.com
$139 billion for IBM
$211 billionfor Microsoft
Well then you're in idiot.
Eh... Trepidity was trying to stay with objective measures, not fictional measures inflated by idiots looking for free money.
Using market cap as a measure of anything beyond how well a company's PR engine is working on wall street is rather foolish.
If you have to tell us that there is competition, then really there isn't any.
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.
To be honest, I think this is exactly the way he would want to be remembered. He had a larger than life personality/persona - he would not want people moping around 'boo hoo, Billy Mays is dead.'
Billy was not above poking fun at himself either, and it was an image he cultivated. The fact that he, and his pitch style was so recognizable speaks volumes. So no, I don't think it's too soon, I see the above as a celebration of Billy, not a satire of him.
They're dominant but not because of ANTICOMPETITIVE measures, they dominate the market because (imho, ofc) their shit is just that good that I want to use it instead of anything else.
If bing maps turns out to be better than google maps I'll use it in a heartbeat.
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
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.
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 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.