5 ms·

In what way does everyone "have to use Google's search engine"? There are no barriers to switching; you could switch to Bing forever in about five seconds. Unl

by raldi 11y ago

In what way does everyone "have to use Google's search engine"? There are no barriers to switching; you could switch to Bing forever in about five seconds. Unlike switching from Facebook, you don't need to get all your friends to come along. Unlike switching from GMail, you don't need to move a bunch of data. Unlike switching your company away from Windows, you don't need to buy all new software, retrain all staff, or get your partners to change the format they use to interchange data with you. If someone were to build a better search engine, we would all just switch. Like when everyone left Altavista in 1999.

samsolomon 11y ago
I think there's something to say about having a monopoly, because the product is better than the alternatives. That's better for consumers than having a monopoly, because there are no alternatives.
- sabrinaleblanc 11y ago
  Totally agree with you on this one, as long as the company doesn't stop better products from entering the market.
  - tolmasky 11y ago
    Usually preventing better products is done through legal assistance: 1. Abusive use of patents to prevent small upstarts that can't afford litigation 2. Getting regulations passed that are so expensive only established players can afford them. 3. Making visa requirements so complex and expensive that it becomes a competitive advantage to have an entire department dedicated to it in your largco. Having so much money that you can put out a product that integrated better with yours is just another spin on putting out a great product as far as I'm concerned, and thus never worries me. IMHO doing away with patents would do much more to "curb bad monopolies" than any litigious strategy.
  - cssblondie 11y ago
    Which, as you seem to be acknowledging, is really the whole debate over the antitrust cases.
  - kushti 11y ago
    Isn't that Google bought duck.com? Isnt' that google demanding Android manufacturers to prioritize its apps (that's why Yandex sues the Google)? and so on.
    - raldi 11y ago
      Google owns duck.com, but that acquisition has nothing to do with DuckDuckGo. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3524336 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3524336 for details.
giancarlostoro 11y ago
I've tried switching from Google to reasonable alternatives, and I usually have to go back to Google to search twice because the results are not what I was expecting, nowhere near. I'm not sure if this is only my own experience, no offence to other engines (and their engineers), but if you can't find what I'm looking for I'm going somewhere else to find it.
- _delirium 11y ago
  Getting a bit tangential: I've been trying Bing again recently out of curiosity, and at least for my usage I find it now pretty reasonable. A few years ago it was barely usable, but now I'm fairly happy with it. It also feels slightly snappier to me than Google on loading results. The main problem is that a small but significant number of sites have a robots.txt that excludes all non-Google crawlers, making it impossible for other search engines to display equally good results in cases where that site has something relevant (unless they blatantly ignore robots.txt).
  - giancarlostoro 11y ago
    So wait, who actually blocks Bing but not Google? That is just completely odd sounding to me... But Bing is definitely one engine I'm trying to switch to, it just isn't reliable when I'm looking up programming related queries sometimes. Then again I always know all the key words to throw at Google to find whatever I'm looking for. Googling is a (query) programming language by itself.
  - caseysoftware 11y ago
    Why would someone do that? If a site owner wants traffic on their site - and most do - they want to make their site as easily discoverable as possible. That means being in all the search engines. Blocking one engine (or all except one) flies in the face of most business models. The only exception I can think of is Google properties. By blocking out competitors, they can try to worsen the experience on other engines. Like imagine a video search on Bing that didn't include YouTube? But even then, it seems like someone finding a Google property via Bing still furthers their interests.
A_COMPUTER 11y ago
From the article, Reich is saying that Google used its dominant market position to unfairly promote its own products. Antitrust isn't only about lack of alternatives.
- raldi 11y ago
  But that has nothing to do with the part of the article that my comment is about.
  - A_COMPUTER 11y ago
    Well, on second reading, you're right. He does slip in there next to Microsoft Windows that you somehow have to use Google Search because everyone else does, and doesn't explain how that supports the rest of his article. I don't think that's the main thrust of it, though.
- jMyles 11y ago
  > unfairly I am as skeptical as anyone about giant corporations, but this is a stretch. How and why does our society expect players to refrain from using their current position to advance to a better position?
  - izacus 11y ago
    Because it hurts our society if they do. It's not about expecting, it's about limiting the damage they do.
    - adventured 11y ago
      It does not hurt society if they're providing a superior product / value proposition for the consumer, regardless of bundling or self-promotion.
    - HeyLaughingBoy 11y ago
      So you plan to stay in the same job for life, turning down any better offers you get?
obastani 11y ago
One potential issue is data -- Google can leverage its huge number of historical searches to improve search for everyone. I doubt this is a huge issue for players such as Microsoft, but it probably poses difficulties for a small start-up.
Drdrdrq 11y ago
Google the search engine doesn't have a monopoly, but Google the search advertising does (adwords).
xg15 11y ago
If someone were to build a better search engine, yes. However, how do you do that if Google has its own data centers across the world, has special arrangements with ISPs so they can run edge servers directly in their networks and can cross-correlate their search results with data from all their other services - which include the aforementioned GMail, many millions of Chrome and Android installations and ad/analytics code embedded in a sizable percentage of all websites? Not to mention all the websites which will optimize their coffee for Google, not for your engine. Note that I'm not talking about some clever algorithms or UI or any other kind of actual innovation. All that stuff is solely "capital" they could accumulate due to their existing power and reputation, but which gives them a huge advantage. A startup, no matter how genius their algorithms are, couldn't beat them in that field, simply because they don't have those resources. Of course you could say "so what, that's the free market" - and of course building capital is a normal post of business - but when this inequality is so severe that it makes competition practically impossible (or only possible between 3 or 4 well-established players, as we see now) then I'd argue that something sounds be done.
- bediger4000 11y ago
  If someone were to build a better search engine, yes. But isn't that what the essence of competition is, in the search engine market?
bobthechef 11y ago
True, but that misses the bigger picture of what these tech giants are doing. It also fails to account for how difficult it is to switch to something else once something has become entrenched. You could switch, but the answer is that you likely won't and the reason you won't isn't necessarily because the product is "better". One of the article's central ideas is that entrenchment can breed more entrenchment that hurts the common good. You might get a better overall search engine, but that search engine is bound up with power that goes beyond search.

by raldi 11y ago

samsolomon 11y ago

I think there's something to say about having a monopoly, because the product is better than the alternatives. That's better for consumers than having a monopoly, because there are no alternatives.

sabrinaleblanc 11y ago
Totally agree with you on this one, as long as the company doesn't stop better products from entering the market.
- tolmasky 11y ago
  Usually preventing better products is done through legal assistance: 1. Abusive use of patents to prevent small upstarts that can't afford litigation 2. Getting regulations passed that are so expensive only established players can afford them. 3. Making visa requirements so complex and expensive that it becomes a competitive advantage to have an entire department dedicated to it in your largco. Having so much money that you can put out a product that integrated better with yours is just another spin on putting out a great product as far as I'm concerned, and thus never worries me. IMHO doing away with patents would do much more to "curb bad monopolies" than any litigious strategy.
- cssblondie 11y ago
  Which, as you seem to be acknowledging, is really the whole debate over the antitrust cases.
- kushti 11y ago
  Isn't that Google bought duck.com? Isnt' that google demanding Android manufacturers to prioritize its apps (that's why Yandex sues the Google)? and so on.
  - raldi 11y ago
    Google owns duck.com, but that acquisition has nothing to do with DuckDuckGo. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3524336 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3524336 for details.

giancarlostoro 11y ago

I've tried switching from Google to reasonable alternatives, and I usually have to go back to Google to search twice because the results are not what I was expecting, nowhere near. I'm not sure if this is only my own experience, no offence to other engines (and their engineers), but if you can't find what I'm looking for I'm going somewhere else to find it.

_delirium 11y ago
Getting a bit tangential: I've been trying Bing again recently out of curiosity, and at least for my usage I find it now pretty reasonable. A few years ago it was barely usable, but now I'm fairly happy with it. It also feels slightly snappier to me than Google on loading results. The main problem is that a small but significant number of sites have a robots.txt that excludes all non-Google crawlers, making it impossible for other search engines to display equally good results in cases where that site has something relevant (unless they blatantly ignore robots.txt).
- giancarlostoro 11y ago
  So wait, who actually blocks Bing but not Google? That is just completely odd sounding to me... But Bing is definitely one engine I'm trying to switch to, it just isn't reliable when I'm looking up programming related queries sometimes. Then again I always know all the key words to throw at Google to find whatever I'm looking for. Googling is a (query) programming language by itself.
- caseysoftware 11y ago
  Why would someone do that? If a site owner wants traffic on their site - and most do - they want to make their site as easily discoverable as possible. That means being in all the search engines. Blocking one engine (or all except one) flies in the face of most business models. The only exception I can think of is Google properties. By blocking out competitors, they can try to worsen the experience on other engines. Like imagine a video search on Bing that didn't include YouTube? But even then, it seems like someone finding a Google property via Bing still furthers their interests.

A_COMPUTER 11y ago

From the article, Reich is saying that Google used its dominant market position to unfairly promote its own products. Antitrust isn't only about lack of alternatives.

raldi 11y ago
But that has nothing to do with the part of the article that my comment is about.
- A_COMPUTER 11y ago
  Well, on second reading, you're right. He does slip in there next to Microsoft Windows that you somehow have to use Google Search because everyone else does, and doesn't explain how that supports the rest of his article. I don't think that's the main thrust of it, though.
jMyles 11y ago
> unfairly I am as skeptical as anyone about giant corporations, but this is a stretch. How and why does our society expect players to refrain from using their current position to advance to a better position?
- izacus 11y ago
  Because it hurts our society if they do. It's not about expecting, it's about limiting the damage they do.
  - adventured 11y ago
    It does not hurt society if they're providing a superior product / value proposition for the consumer, regardless of bundling or self-promotion.
  - HeyLaughingBoy 11y ago
    So you plan to stay in the same job for life, turning down any better offers you get?

obastani 11y ago

One potential issue is data -- Google can leverage its huge number of historical searches to improve search for everyone. I doubt this is a huge issue for players such as Microsoft, but it probably poses difficulties for a small start-up.

Drdrdrq 11y ago

Google the search engine doesn't have a monopoly, but Google the search advertising does (adwords).

xg15 11y ago

If someone were to build a better search engine, yes. However, how do you do that if Google has its own data centers across the world, has special arrangements with ISPs so they can run edge servers directly in their networks and can cross-correlate their search results with data from all their other services - which include the aforementioned GMail, many millions of Chrome and Android installations and ad/analytics code embedded in a sizable percentage of all websites? Not to mention all the websites which will optimize their coffee for Google, not for your engine. Note that I'm not talking about some clever algorithms or UI or any other kind of actual innovation. All that stuff is solely "capital" they could accumulate due to their existing power and reputation, but which gives them a huge advantage. A startup, no matter how genius their algorithms are, couldn't beat them in that field, simply because they don't have those resources. Of course you could say "so what, that's the free market" - and of course building capital is a normal post of business - but when this inequality is so severe that it makes competition practically impossible (or only possible between 3 or 4 well-established players, as we see now) then I'd argue that something sounds be done.

bediger4000 11y ago
If someone were to build a better search engine, yes. But isn't that what the essence of competition is, in the search engine market?

bobthechef 11y ago

True, but that misses the bigger picture of what these tech giants are doing. It also fails to account for how difficult it is to switch to something else once something has become entrenched. You could switch, but the answer is that you likely won't and the reason you won't isn't necessarily because the product is "better". One of the article's central ideas is that entrenchment can breed more entrenchment that hurts the common good. You might get a better overall search engine, but that search engine is bound up with power that goes beyond search.