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All of Google's products are complementary products that create lock-in. For instance both Chrome and Android have been created with the purpose of controlling

All of Google's products are complementary products that create lock-in. For instance both Chrome and Android have been created with the purpose of controlling the underlying platform that people use, in order for them to not be at the mercy of the other platform owners, like Apple or Microsoft. And it worked. This is very obvious to anybody with an interest in how microeconomics works. For example this is why open source can exist in a world where people need to struggle to put food on the table. It's basic knowledge: complementary goods and services are meant to increase demand for your cash cows. But alas good journalism is dead.

ronald_raygun 10y ago
A good blog post on what youre talking about https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/06/12/strategy-letter-v/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/06/12/strategy-letter-v/
- hackcrafter 10y ago
  On a side note, I'm glad to see Joel has re-themed his blog posts but kept them hosted at the same URLs. Many of these posts seem timeless and often very prescient. In fact, at the bottom of this one, he points out the strategic dead-end Sun was heading down with commoditizing software while also making/promoting Java that commoditized their hardware...
  - lobster_johnson 10y ago
    He recently moved to WordPress, after having used his own blogging tool for years: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2016/12/09/rip-citydesk/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2016/12/09/rip-citydesk/
- xenadu02 10y ago
  He's got a great prescient paragraph at the bottom: > Sun is the loose cannon of the computer industry. Unable to see past their raging fear and loathing of Microsoft, they adopt strategies based on anger rather than self-interest. Sun’s two strategies are (a) make software a commodity by promoting and developing free software (Star Office, Linux, Apache, Gnome, etc), and (b) make hardware a commodity by promoting Java, with its bytecode architecture and WORA. OK, Sun, pop quiz: when the music stops, where are you going to sit down? Without proprietary advantages in hardware or software, you’re going to have to take the commodity price, which barely covers the cost of cheap factories in Guadalajara, not your cushy offices in Silicon Valley. Indeed Sun got eaten alive by commodity hardware while not having any viable strategy to make money on software.
throwaway98237 10y ago
"All of Google's products..." and there are many "create lock-in." so very true How have there been no anti-trust related issues here?!
- eropple 10y ago
  Because antitrust law is made of words that mean things. There is no field, anywhere, in which Google has the monopolistic position necessary, or has been shown to be in an oligopolic group necessary, to invoke antitrust law against the company. Not search, not ads, not mobile, not e-mail, not anywhere. They have competition, and healthy competition, in literally every field.
  - throwaway98237 10y ago
    You didn't need to be an asshole. But, you went and were.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    - eropple 10y ago
      I answered the breathless and silly question you asked here instead of punching in your surely-not-Google search engine of choice with exactly the level of seriousness with which I regarded it. HTH. HAND.
sahaj 10y ago
"All of Google's products are complementary products that create lock-in" I disagree. Chrome was created to be a standards based browser, Android to unify the different phone operating systems circa 2004. I picked Google products because they allowed me to get out if I needed to. Gmail provides IMAP, POP. Docs and Music let you take out your data as needed. Google intentionally creates a way to get your data out. All of these things require foresight and work to pull off. Does the lock-in exist because no one else is offering the same service? Potentially. But the intention of the company when they created these services was to create the best service, not a lock-in service.
- user5994461 10y ago
  They're just ad distributing products. Ever tried to install an adblocker on Android? There isn't anything you can do without rooting your phone. Seriously, it should be called Addroid. Ever tried to install adblock/ublock on Chrome? only to find out that it doesn't exist in the chrome store or was removed again.
  - bad_user 10y ago
    Well, actually Android is the most friendly mobile platform for ad-blockers, or other hacks. What you're complaining about is Chrome for Android, but then again Android is also the only mobile platform supported by a real Firefox implementation that has plugins, including ad-blockers. You're talking about rooting the phone, I guess you want /etc/hosts or something, but you know, even on the desktop that kind of solution requires sudo rights. This one is entirely about security and really, Android is not that hard to root. And even though I'm a Firefox user on the desktop, I've also used Chrome with AdBlock Plus and then uBlock Origin and never had any problems.
    - user5994461 10y ago
      Note: Firefox on android has only supported plugins since a few months ago.
      - 10y ago

ronald_raygun 10y ago

A good blog post on what youre talking about https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/06/12/strategy-letter-v/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/06/12/strategy-letter-v/

hackcrafter 10y ago
On a side note, I'm glad to see Joel has re-themed his blog posts but kept them hosted at the same URLs. Many of these posts seem timeless and often very prescient. In fact, at the bottom of this one, he points out the strategic dead-end Sun was heading down with commoditizing software while also making/promoting Java that commoditized their hardware...
- lobster_johnson 10y ago
  He recently moved to WordPress, after having used his own blogging tool for years: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2016/12/09/rip-citydesk/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2016/12/09/rip-citydesk/
xenadu02 10y ago
He's got a great prescient paragraph at the bottom: > Sun is the loose cannon of the computer industry. Unable to see past their raging fear and loathing of Microsoft, they adopt strategies based on anger rather than self-interest. Sun’s two strategies are (a) make software a commodity by promoting and developing free software (Star Office, Linux, Apache, Gnome, etc), and (b) make hardware a commodity by promoting Java, with its bytecode architecture and WORA. OK, Sun, pop quiz: when the music stops, where are you going to sit down? Without proprietary advantages in hardware or software, you’re going to have to take the commodity price, which barely covers the cost of cheap factories in Guadalajara, not your cushy offices in Silicon Valley. Indeed Sun got eaten alive by commodity hardware while not having any viable strategy to make money on software.

throwaway98237 10y ago

"All of Google's products..." and there are many "create lock-in." so very true How have there been no anti-trust related issues here?!

eropple 10y ago
Because antitrust law is made of words that mean things. There is no field, anywhere, in which Google has the monopolistic position necessary, or has been shown to be in an oligopolic group necessary, to invoke antitrust law against the company. Not search, not ads, not mobile, not e-mail, not anywhere. They have competition, and healthy competition, in literally every field.
- throwaway98237 10y ago
  You didn't need to be an asshole. But, you went and were.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - eropple 10y ago
    I answered the breathless and silly question you asked here instead of punching in your surely-not-Google search engine of choice with exactly the level of seriousness with which I regarded it. HTH. HAND.

sahaj 10y ago

"All of Google's products are complementary products that create lock-in" I disagree. Chrome was created to be a standards based browser, Android to unify the different phone operating systems circa 2004. I picked Google products because they allowed me to get out if I needed to. Gmail provides IMAP, POP. Docs and Music let you take out your data as needed. Google intentionally creates a way to get your data out. All of these things require foresight and work to pull off. Does the lock-in exist because no one else is offering the same service? Potentially. But the intention of the company when they created these services was to create the best service, not a lock-in service.

user5994461 10y ago
They're just ad distributing products. Ever tried to install an adblocker on Android? There isn't anything you can do without rooting your phone. Seriously, it should be called Addroid. Ever tried to install adblock/ublock on Chrome? only to find out that it doesn't exist in the chrome store or was removed again.
- bad_user 10y ago
  Well, actually Android is the most friendly mobile platform for ad-blockers, or other hacks. What you're complaining about is Chrome for Android, but then again Android is also the only mobile platform supported by a real Firefox implementation that has plugins, including ad-blockers. You're talking about rooting the phone, I guess you want /etc/hosts or something, but you know, even on the desktop that kind of solution requires sudo rights. This one is entirely about security and really, Android is not that hard to root. And even though I'm a Firefox user on the desktop, I've also used Chrome with AdBlock Plus and then uBlock Origin and never had any problems.
  - user5994461 10y ago
    Note: Firefox on android has only supported plugins since a few months ago.
    - 10y ago