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.'"

Comments

Google Monopoly today...

[loteck]

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.

Re:They're not big.

[Mordok-DestroyerOfWo]

You're exactly right. Bing does do some pretty neat things. But I use Google Documents, GMail, and am eagerly awaiting Voice when it comes out. Google just knows how to make products people want to use, and how to keep them free.

Re:They're not big.

[Hurricane78]

I know there were better engines out there. I personally had to admin Hotbot at the end of its life. And it was way better than Google. Especially the query features.
It was just, that to use Google, you additionally did not need half a brain to search for something.

I actually hate the search interface of Google. One line? Can't search for non-alphanumeric stuff? Even quotes are nothing more than a rule that this word has to loosely follow that one? Ambiguity and missing boolean functions/operators? It's even worse than the PHP interpreter.

I can understand that someone who has no idea what he's doing, will like Google's interface, because Google will figure it out for him. But if you know how to input complex queries, then this thing is a nightmare.

Additionally, nowadays, even a better search engine had no chance. Not because of anticompetitive behavior. But because of inertia, aka. "being used to it". Changing what you are used to, always is painful. So as long as the thing you are doing does not create more pain that the change, you will stay with it, no matter what.

This also is, what keeps Windows on the desktop.