4 ms·

>Bing seems pretty close in search quality, but yet few switch over. a) Why would anyone switch if they are both equal and both free? b) Most people use chrom

by ouid 10y ago

>Bing seems pretty close in search quality, but yet few switch over. a) Why would anyone switch if they are both equal and both free? b) Most people use chrome. Most people don't change their default search engine. c) As much as people pretend to hate Google, they actually hate Microsoft a lot more, and for good reason. Microsoft operates on bad faith far more frequently than Google does, most of their business decisions seem to revolve around the question "How do we leverage product A to force the user to use our product B?" whereas Google's anticompetitive behavior has always been more passive.

5ilv3r 10y ago
C is only true from the customer's perspective. Google doesn't seem to be willing to crush competition, but they are still willing to acquhire them into being on their own side. Youtube, for example, was clearly superior to google video, so it was purchased. Customers were not very impacted.
ocdtrekkie 10y ago
In fact, you are self-defeating your arguments. Chrome was entirely built to be leveraged to force people to use Google Search, since people don't change their default search engine. Bear in mind, they paid Apple and Mozilla each over a billion dollars to be everyone's default search. Sundar Pichai, the current CEO of Google, got started by pushing the Google Toolbar as one of those bloatware add-ons when you install other software, that would hijack your default search when you installed it. Google also leverages Android to force people to use all sorts of Google products, using their agreements with OEMs which ensure things like default search, default maps, default email setup, etc. That's the whole point of Android. Google's anticompetitive behavior is extremely active, and they make Microsoft look like an innocent kitten in comparison. It sounds like you don't know a whole lot about how Google operates as a business.
- AnimalMuppet 10y ago
  > ... and they make Microsoft look like an innocent kitten in comparison. It sounds like you don't remember Microsoft back in the day. Google "Halloween Memos". (Edit: Note particularly the bit about "de-commodifying protocols", that is, finding ways to break standards and create lock-in.) Microsoft literally paid web sites to put HTML in their pages so that Netscape wouldn't handle properly. Microsoft literally generated false error messages when they detected a product from a competitor. (IIRC, that one was on a spreadsheet, and the product was maybe a DOS clone? There wasn't anything wrong with the clone, but the error message made it look like there was.) An equivalent, today, for Google would be if, when you typed bing.com into Chrome, it took you to Google. Or if Android detected Microsoft apps and made them break in mysterious ways. ouid's point is valid. Google is more passive in anticompetitive behavior. (That doesn't make the behavior good. It makes it less bad than Microsoft. Microsoft is hardly the "innocent kitten" here. However, I will concede that Microsoft hasn't been as bad as they were for... maybe a decade?)
  - ocdtrekkie 10y ago
    I would argue that if you think any of that compares to Google, you don't have any clue what Google's been up to lately. ;) But at least you can acknowledge that there's almost no comparable evidence of anticompetitive behavior from Microsoft in the last decade. But I acknowledge as well that if Microsoft were in a monopoly position again, as Google is now, they would be up to the same hijinks.
    - AnimalMuppet 10y ago
      Microsoft arguably still is, in the OS area. What mellowed Microsoft out, in my view, was the US antitrust court case and resulting consent decree.
  - koalaman 9y ago
    passive anticompetitive behavior, is just competitive behavior.
  - koalaman 9y ago
    passive anticompetitive behavior, is just competitive behavior.
- fixermark 10y ago
  "Chrome was entirely built to be leveraged to force people to use Google Search" That grossly simplifies the origin and existence of Chrome. While it's true that Google is the default omnibox search (I'd argue that "people don't change their default search engine" is a really weak way to "force" people to use a browser---too weak to justify building a whole browser by itself), you have to remember the ecosystem of browsers that were on the market when Chrome hit the scene. Flash was all over the place, and memory protection between open windows / tabs was nonexistent; a misbehaving browser plugin (and there were a lot of them at the time, including Flash) or a bug in JavaScript could cripple your entire session in IE, Safari, and Firefox. Google's business model is very much centered on the web (not just search, but ads and office productivity applications); strategically, it was risky of Google to be in the position of being, essentially, application developers for platforms they didn't have any controlling stake in. They needed to be in a position where they could---for example---improve process isolation, rendering engines, and JavaScript engines instead of delaying projects until the three dominant browsers got around to making the technological features Google saw as important a priority. I assume "And it defaults to the Google search engine" is in there too, but that's a bit like saying General Motors makes cars so they can get their stereos into people's hands.
  - ocdtrekkie 10y ago
    While Google may have found other uses for it as well, even pro-Google Sundar Pichai interviews and such all cite Google Toolbar, and then it's successor, Google Chrome, as Pichai's wild successes in expanding the spread of Google Search, and essentially why he is now the CEO. And that the whole selling point for Chrome was as a hedge against IE hypothetically blocking their toolbar.
    - fixermark 9y ago
      "Download Chrome so that Microsoft can't block the Google Toolbar" isn't a selling point for consumers. I don't doubt that it factors into the strategic story of why the company invested in and supported the browser, but in addition, office productivity tools like GMail and the Apps suite rely on local storage, offline mode, and RPC technologies that the three big browsers weren't guaranteed to prioritize supporting in 2008. To ensure it could build the apps it wanted to build, Google needed a web user-agent it could control. Chrome was built and launched as much to enable those apps as it was to keep Google current as a default search target.
DamonHD 10y ago
Never mind free. In the UK most people would save £200/y with no interruption in service simply by switching energy suppliers, and yet they don't...
- ouid 10y ago
  Surely some of them do, and I bet the ones that don't largely don't know that they're leaving money on the table. What are the two companies in question?
  - DamonHD 10y ago
    https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/publications-and-updates/infographic-bills-prices-and-profits https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/publications-and-updates/infographi...

by ouid 10y ago

5ilv3r 10y ago

C is only true from the customer's perspective. Google doesn't seem to be willing to crush competition, but they are still willing to acquhire them into being on their own side. Youtube, for example, was clearly superior to google video, so it was purchased. Customers were not very impacted.

ocdtrekkie 10y ago

In fact, you are self-defeating your arguments. Chrome was entirely built to be leveraged to force people to use Google Search, since people don't change their default search engine. Bear in mind, they paid Apple and Mozilla each over a billion dollars to be everyone's default search. Sundar Pichai, the current CEO of Google, got started by pushing the Google Toolbar as one of those bloatware add-ons when you install other software, that would hijack your default search when you installed it. Google also leverages Android to force people to use all sorts of Google products, using their agreements with OEMs which ensure things like default search, default maps, default email setup, etc. That's the whole point of Android. Google's anticompetitive behavior is extremely active, and they make Microsoft look like an innocent kitten in comparison. It sounds like you don't know a whole lot about how Google operates as a business.

AnimalMuppet 10y ago
> ... and they make Microsoft look like an innocent kitten in comparison. It sounds like you don't remember Microsoft back in the day. Google "Halloween Memos". (Edit: Note particularly the bit about "de-commodifying protocols", that is, finding ways to break standards and create lock-in.) Microsoft literally paid web sites to put HTML in their pages so that Netscape wouldn't handle properly. Microsoft literally generated false error messages when they detected a product from a competitor. (IIRC, that one was on a spreadsheet, and the product was maybe a DOS clone? There wasn't anything wrong with the clone, but the error message made it look like there was.) An equivalent, today, for Google would be if, when you typed bing.com into Chrome, it took you to Google. Or if Android detected Microsoft apps and made them break in mysterious ways. ouid's point is valid. Google is more passive in anticompetitive behavior. (That doesn't make the behavior good. It makes it less bad than Microsoft. Microsoft is hardly the "innocent kitten" here. However, I will concede that Microsoft hasn't been as bad as they were for... maybe a decade?)
- ocdtrekkie 10y ago
  I would argue that if you think any of that compares to Google, you don't have any clue what Google's been up to lately. ;) But at least you can acknowledge that there's almost no comparable evidence of anticompetitive behavior from Microsoft in the last decade. But I acknowledge as well that if Microsoft were in a monopoly position again, as Google is now, they would be up to the same hijinks.
  - AnimalMuppet 10y ago
    Microsoft arguably still is, in the OS area. What mellowed Microsoft out, in my view, was the US antitrust court case and resulting consent decree.
- koalaman 9y ago
  passive anticompetitive behavior, is just competitive behavior.
- koalaman 9y ago
  passive anticompetitive behavior, is just competitive behavior.
fixermark 10y ago
"Chrome was entirely built to be leveraged to force people to use Google Search" That grossly simplifies the origin and existence of Chrome. While it's true that Google is the default omnibox search (I'd argue that "people don't change their default search engine" is a really weak way to "force" people to use a browser---too weak to justify building a whole browser by itself), you have to remember the ecosystem of browsers that were on the market when Chrome hit the scene. Flash was all over the place, and memory protection between open windows / tabs was nonexistent; a misbehaving browser plugin (and there were a lot of them at the time, including Flash) or a bug in JavaScript could cripple your entire session in IE, Safari, and Firefox. Google's business model is very much centered on the web (not just search, but ads and office productivity applications); strategically, it was risky of Google to be in the position of being, essentially, application developers for platforms they didn't have any controlling stake in. They needed to be in a position where they could---for example---improve process isolation, rendering engines, and JavaScript engines instead of delaying projects until the three dominant browsers got around to making the technological features Google saw as important a priority. I assume "And it defaults to the Google search engine" is in there too, but that's a bit like saying General Motors makes cars so they can get their stereos into people's hands.
- ocdtrekkie 10y ago
  While Google may have found other uses for it as well, even pro-Google Sundar Pichai interviews and such all cite Google Toolbar, and then it's successor, Google Chrome, as Pichai's wild successes in expanding the spread of Google Search, and essentially why he is now the CEO. And that the whole selling point for Chrome was as a hedge against IE hypothetically blocking their toolbar.
  - fixermark 9y ago
    "Download Chrome so that Microsoft can't block the Google Toolbar" isn't a selling point for consumers. I don't doubt that it factors into the strategic story of why the company invested in and supported the browser, but in addition, office productivity tools like GMail and the Apps suite rely on local storage, offline mode, and RPC technologies that the three big browsers weren't guaranteed to prioritize supporting in 2008. To ensure it could build the apps it wanted to build, Google needed a web user-agent it could control. Chrome was built and launched as much to enable those apps as it was to keep Google current as a default search target.

DamonHD 10y ago

Never mind free. In the UK most people would save £200/y with no interruption in service simply by switching energy suppliers, and yet they don't...

ouid 10y ago
Surely some of them do, and I bet the ones that don't largely don't know that they're leaving money on the table. What are the two companies in question?
- DamonHD 10y ago
  https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/publications-and-updates/infographic-bills-prices-and-profits https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/publications-and-updates/infographi...