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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.'"
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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.
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.
"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.
Google: "Googlee-uh penis-ah vely smarr. Amelican Govelnment penis-ah so big... sooo big."
Caveat Utilitor
They are big but not that big.
So you aren't that big when you are probably bigger than more than 99.99% of all businesses in the world? I'm sorry, but that's bullshit.
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.
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.
Could have fooled me.
http://www.bing.com/search?q=apple&go=&form=QBLH
I agree about the innovation stifling though.
-- i am jack's amusing sig file
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.
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 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.
"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.