5 ms·

Google is like a convenient highway that everyone takes to work: just because there are other routes (DuckDuckGo) it doesn't mean people will take them, and reg

Google is like a convenient highway that everyone takes to work: just because there are other routes (DuckDuckGo) it doesn't mean people will take them, and regulatory framework has to, in absence of a legitimate competitor (Japan prefers Yahoo! for some reason), treat Google as a functional monopoly. Standard Oil held down prices which was good in theory for customers, but it was devastating for competitors and their employees, who spent like any other consumer. Europe's attitude towards Google isn't very free-market minded, but they are asking what kind of society they want, rather than having the economy as the be all and end all of their values. EDIT: If you're going to downvote without explaining why, then you haven't really helped the conversation, you just made yourself feel less insecure about your own opinion.

jbuzbee 11y ago
>Standard Oil held down prices which was good in theory for customers, but it was devastating for competitors and their employees Uh, are you saying that Standard Oil should have made business decisions based on what was good for their competitors? This starts to get into collusion. And I understand that the theory was that Standard Oil would hold prices down, running at a loss in order to kill off all competition, then raise prices as high as it wanted in a non-competitive market. But this doesn't seem to apply to Google's situation as customers can easily move to searching Amazon, eBay, etc. when shopping.
- travisp 11y ago
  >Uh, are you saying that Standard Oil should have made business decisions based on what was good for their competitors? This starts to get into collusion. This is exactly what some critics of antitrust law say happens: > Under the Antitrust laws, a man becomes a criminal from the moment he goes into business, no matter what he does. For instance, if he charges prices which some bureaucrats judge as too high, he can be prosecuted for monopoly or for a successful “intent to monopolize”; if he charges prices lower than those of his competitors, he can be prosecuted for “unfair competition” or “restraint of trade”; and if he charges the same prices as his competitors, he can be prosecuted for “collusion” or “conspiracy.”
- rm_-rf_slash 11y ago
  The problem wasn't just Standard Oil, it was the society around it. A purely free market society would see what the company was doing and close the books at that, but the government has a broader base of concerns. Namely, constituents of oil-producing regions who elected representatives to protect them. Think of it like Wal-Mart: it may provide jobs and cheaper goods to a community, but the wealth is a net outflow towards the Walton family. Local businesses tend to recirculate their profits within the community through investment and higher spending, resulting in a broader standard of life increase. Europe as a whole is much more concerned with quality of life than America, so it makes sense to see why they would view Google's homogenization of habit as a potential threat. I think it's worth considering other societies' values when debating their laws compared to your own. There's a lot that America does right that Europeans want no part of, and vice versa. It really depends on who you are as a person.
  - jbuzbee 11y ago
    > Think of it like Wal-Mart: it may provide jobs and cheaper goods to a community, but the wealth is a net outflow towards the Walton family Providing jobs and cheaper goods to the community sounds like it's putting wealth into the pockets of the community to me. If you can buy a gallon of milk for the kids cheaper at Walmart then you can at the corner store, you have extra money for school supplies, medicine, etc. >Europe as a whole is much more concerned with quality of life than America Sorry, I have to roll my eyes at that comment and move on...
    - rm_-rf_slash 11y ago
      1: Unless Wal-Mart sells literally everything (health insurance, higher education, etc), then proprietors of other kinds of businesses will be hurt because average incomes have gone down. Milk may be cheaper but getting a contractor to tile my roof isn't. 2: Go to, say, Ravenna, Italy, and try to get a drink after midnight and on a weekday. You can't. The people there would rather all be on the same schedule (espresso for breakfast, big lunch with the family, work till evening, late dinner, then a stroll around town) instead of having their friendships and families be separated by the graveyard shift. As a hungry American at 2AM it was an inconvenience, but overall it works and people are happy. If you're still unconvinced, ask a European what they think of paid parental leave, month-long vacations (inb4 productivity argument, Germany offers much longer vacations than America and has higher productivity per worker), national single-payer health care...I could go on. If Americans really, really cared about these things, we would have them by now.
thedevil 11y ago
"Google is like a convenient highway" If I have an idea for a better highway and money to build it, I still can't just build the highway. If I have a better idea for a search engine, I could wipe out Google. Google is exposed to market forces, the highway isn't. Your analogy doesn't work at all.
- rm_-rf_slash 11y ago
  And if I had an idea for a better social network, I could replace Facebook. Just because there exists the opportunity for a competitor doesn't mean one will emerge. Until then (if it even happens!) the courts of Europe will continue to view Google as a disproportionately powerful force. Because it's an American company backed and staffed by people who fundamentally see the Internet and global economy in a different light than most Europeans (right to be forgotten, etc), Europeans have every reason to be suspicious.
  - trothamel 11y ago
    You could replace Facebook, or Myspace, or Friendster, even.
  - raldi 11y ago
    > And if I had an idea for a better social network, I could replace Facebook. Not necessarily. There are gigantic network effects propping Facebook up. A Facebook user who wants to try another social network needs to convince all their friends to move. And each of them has to convince their friends. But to try another search engine takes takes about five seconds. You could switch from Google to Bing immediately and never look back, if you thought Bing were better.
    - rm_-rf_slash 11y ago
      Well, um, that's exactly my point. It's not that I can switch to another service, it's that other people won't, unless they each have a strong reason to. So if I feel a ubiquitous web service maligns my business, I should be concerned about their power over the populace, not just me.
AnimalMuppet 11y ago
> and regulatory framework has to, in absence of a legitimate competitor (Japan prefers Yahoo! for some reason), treat Google as a functional monopoly. Yeah, well, there's this outfit called Microsoft. They have this service called Bing. You may have heard of it. I'm sure that they'd be pretty offended to be told that they're not "a legitimate competitor". You can have a legitimate competitor, and still have the majority of people prefer one. That's not the same as a monopoly.
- rm_-rf_slash 11y ago
  Third "again" today, it doesn't matter that other options exist for me, it's that businesses and other institutions that rely on search can't expect other people to use anything but Google, thereby giving the company disproportionate influence.
  - AnimalMuppet 11y ago
    If you're a business, and you're advertising on Google, but not on Bing and not on Yahoo, you're probably being pretty stupid - unless the revenue per dollar spent is higher for Google than for Bing and Yahoo. If you can demonstrate that it is, then you might have a case. I only said "might", because the question isn't whether Google is more effective per dollar. The question is whether advertising on Bing generates more revenue than it costs. If it does, then businesses would be stupid not to also advertize on Bing.

jbuzbee 11y ago

>Standard Oil held down prices which was good in theory for customers, but it was devastating for competitors and their employees Uh, are you saying that Standard Oil should have made business decisions based on what was good for their competitors? This starts to get into collusion. And I understand that the theory was that Standard Oil would hold prices down, running at a loss in order to kill off all competition, then raise prices as high as it wanted in a non-competitive market. But this doesn't seem to apply to Google's situation as customers can easily move to searching Amazon, eBay, etc. when shopping.

travisp 11y ago
>Uh, are you saying that Standard Oil should have made business decisions based on what was good for their competitors? This starts to get into collusion. This is exactly what some critics of antitrust law say happens: > Under the Antitrust laws, a man becomes a criminal from the moment he goes into business, no matter what he does. For instance, if he charges prices which some bureaucrats judge as too high, he can be prosecuted for monopoly or for a successful “intent to monopolize”; if he charges prices lower than those of his competitors, he can be prosecuted for “unfair competition” or “restraint of trade”; and if he charges the same prices as his competitors, he can be prosecuted for “collusion” or “conspiracy.”
rm_-rf_slash 11y ago
The problem wasn't just Standard Oil, it was the society around it. A purely free market society would see what the company was doing and close the books at that, but the government has a broader base of concerns. Namely, constituents of oil-producing regions who elected representatives to protect them. Think of it like Wal-Mart: it may provide jobs and cheaper goods to a community, but the wealth is a net outflow towards the Walton family. Local businesses tend to recirculate their profits within the community through investment and higher spending, resulting in a broader standard of life increase. Europe as a whole is much more concerned with quality of life than America, so it makes sense to see why they would view Google's homogenization of habit as a potential threat. I think it's worth considering other societies' values when debating their laws compared to your own. There's a lot that America does right that Europeans want no part of, and vice versa. It really depends on who you are as a person.
- jbuzbee 11y ago
  > Think of it like Wal-Mart: it may provide jobs and cheaper goods to a community, but the wealth is a net outflow towards the Walton family Providing jobs and cheaper goods to the community sounds like it's putting wealth into the pockets of the community to me. If you can buy a gallon of milk for the kids cheaper at Walmart then you can at the corner store, you have extra money for school supplies, medicine, etc. >Europe as a whole is much more concerned with quality of life than America Sorry, I have to roll my eyes at that comment and move on...
  - rm_-rf_slash 11y ago
    1: Unless Wal-Mart sells literally everything (health insurance, higher education, etc), then proprietors of other kinds of businesses will be hurt because average incomes have gone down. Milk may be cheaper but getting a contractor to tile my roof isn't. 2: Go to, say, Ravenna, Italy, and try to get a drink after midnight and on a weekday. You can't. The people there would rather all be on the same schedule (espresso for breakfast, big lunch with the family, work till evening, late dinner, then a stroll around town) instead of having their friendships and families be separated by the graveyard shift. As a hungry American at 2AM it was an inconvenience, but overall it works and people are happy. If you're still unconvinced, ask a European what they think of paid parental leave, month-long vacations (inb4 productivity argument, Germany offers much longer vacations than America and has higher productivity per worker), national single-payer health care...I could go on. If Americans really, really cared about these things, we would have them by now.

thedevil 11y ago

"Google is like a convenient highway" If I have an idea for a better highway and money to build it, I still can't just build the highway. If I have a better idea for a search engine, I could wipe out Google. Google is exposed to market forces, the highway isn't. Your analogy doesn't work at all.

rm_-rf_slash 11y ago
And if I had an idea for a better social network, I could replace Facebook. Just because there exists the opportunity for a competitor doesn't mean one will emerge. Until then (if it even happens!) the courts of Europe will continue to view Google as a disproportionately powerful force. Because it's an American company backed and staffed by people who fundamentally see the Internet and global economy in a different light than most Europeans (right to be forgotten, etc), Europeans have every reason to be suspicious.
- trothamel 11y ago
  You could replace Facebook, or Myspace, or Friendster, even.
- raldi 11y ago
  > And if I had an idea for a better social network, I could replace Facebook. Not necessarily. There are gigantic network effects propping Facebook up. A Facebook user who wants to try another social network needs to convince all their friends to move. And each of them has to convince their friends. But to try another search engine takes takes about five seconds. You could switch from Google to Bing immediately and never look back, if you thought Bing were better.
  - rm_-rf_slash 11y ago
    Well, um, that's exactly my point. It's not that I can switch to another service, it's that other people won't, unless they each have a strong reason to. So if I feel a ubiquitous web service maligns my business, I should be concerned about their power over the populace, not just me.

AnimalMuppet 11y ago

> and regulatory framework has to, in absence of a legitimate competitor (Japan prefers Yahoo! for some reason), treat Google as a functional monopoly. Yeah, well, there's this outfit called Microsoft. They have this service called Bing. You may have heard of it. I'm sure that they'd be pretty offended to be told that they're not "a legitimate competitor". You can have a legitimate competitor, and still have the majority of people prefer one. That's not the same as a monopoly.

rm_-rf_slash 11y ago
Third "again" today, it doesn't matter that other options exist for me, it's that businesses and other institutions that rely on search can't expect other people to use anything but Google, thereby giving the company disproportionate influence.
- AnimalMuppet 11y ago
  If you're a business, and you're advertising on Google, but not on Bing and not on Yahoo, you're probably being pretty stupid - unless the revenue per dollar spent is higher for Google than for Bing and Yahoo. If you can demonstrate that it is, then you might have a case. I only said "might", because the question isn't whether Google is more effective per dollar. The question is whether advertising on Bing generates more revenue than it costs. If it does, then businesses would be stupid not to also advertize on Bing.