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> Consider TinEye, who first published reverse image search; later Google just poured engineers onto their own reverse image search platform and copied it If G
by TheHegemon 9y ago
> Consider TinEye, who first published reverse image search; later Google just poured engineers onto their own reverse image search platform and copied it
If Google's product was better, wouldn't that mean it increased competition and innovation?
- jonathanyc 9y agoI think it’s a comparable situation to dumping[1]. Google can attract users from TinEye by virtue of their brand alone and subsidize their own product even if it is unprofitable. The result is that in the long term TinEye is unable to compete and disappears, after which point Google has no incentive to improve their service. The only entities left that can compete are other titans. It also is a distortion in that it discourages investment into technical innovation if you are trying to make money as a non-titan—-why even bother if Google will just come along and copy your product then give it away for free (to drive traffic to Google search)? There is still the potential of innovation in this case from academic researchers, who might not care about commercialization. But such a situation where individuals cannot hope to compete and where research just feeds into titans would be pretty awful. 1: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dumping_(pricing_policy) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dumping_(pricing_policy)