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Nice try but there is no logic between your points 1 and 2 to come to the third. Apple sells hardware and is not a monopoly, so if their customers are happy wi

Nice try but there is no logic between your points 1 and 2 to come to the third. Apple sells hardware and is not a monopoly, so if their customers are happy with their choice then good for them. On the other hand Google is a monopoly, so a lot of people are not ok with them abusing their position to hijack the web (that they already “own”) and email. Edit: typo

RobertRoberts 9y ago
Their search products are a monopoly, their email is not. I provide paid email services for my clients, they can use Gmail if they want, or not. But for SEO, it's Google all the way down...
- r3bl 9y ago
  There's nothing stopping end users from using non-Google search engine. Bing, Yahoo, DuckDuckGo... they're all viable products that you can use to accomplish 90ish% of what Google could find, and maybe even more now that Google strips historical data (see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16153840 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16153840, from a month ago). Since you're mentioning SEO, I just checked and 15.8% of searches for my website came from non-Google search engines in the last month (in my case, Yandex and DDG are the most popular ones). Bing is also taking a huge chunk of the traffic thanks to Windows 10 using it in the start menu, whether you like it or not. And while one example isn't viable enough to make general statements, it's clear that alternatives do exist and are used extensively. It's a product that's superior when compared to its competitors. It's not a monopoly though.
  - matt4077 9y ago
    Google's market is advertising. If you want to advertise in search, you do not have the freedom to avoid Google and just spend all your money with Bing.
  - akvadrako 9y ago
    Bing, Yahoo and DuckDuckGo are not a list of competitors. Yahoo is based on Bing & Google¹. DDG uses a lot of sources, but I believe the bulk of results come from Yahoo and Bing. I agree there are options, but they are Bing and Yandex. The others are just mashups. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahoo!_Search https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahoo!_Search
  - KMag 9y ago
    > There's nothing stopping end users from using non-Google search engine. Just so everyone's clear, monopoly doesn't mean (nearly) 100% market share; it means a large enough market share to be able to manipulate the market. So, to elaborate on your first point, I think you're saying that the ease of switching search engines means that a market share necessary to manipulate the search market would be near 100%, much higher than Google has. Am I reading you correctly?
    - ams6110 9y ago
      Do you have an economic or legal reference for that definition of "monopoly"? Since search engines are all free to use, many of the criteria of a monopoly seem hard to apply, but the classic defintions I'm familiar with include things such as "no reasonable substitute" which is not the case for Google Search.
      - icebraining 9y ago
        Courts do not require a literal monopoly before applying rules for single firm conduct; that term is used as shorthand for a firm with significant and durable market power — that is, the long term ability to raise price or exclude competitors. That is how that term is used here: a "monopolist" is a firm with significant and durable market power. https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/competition-guidance/guide-antitrust-laws/single-firm-conduct/monopolization-defined https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/competition-guidance/guide-a...
      - bluGill 9y ago
        From wikipedia The lowest yet market share of a company considered "dominant" in the EU was 39.7% Google is dominate for sure.
  - kuschku 9y ago
    Something can be a monopoly in market, but not in another. Google isn't a monopoly for users, it's a monopoly for developers. You can't get users without being on Google. Only if I can replace one company with another, at roughly equal results, can the market be considered competitive. I can't delist my site on Google and replace those users with Bing users. If each search engine had only 5% or 10% of the market, though, I could. And I might. That's what a competitive market looks like. Google is, from that perspective, a monopoly.
    - RobertRoberts 9y ago
      I would tend to agree, but not their email. That's easily replaced.
      - kuschku 9y ago
        Is it? Can you simply avoid emailing GMail users and continue? Not really. And yet, thanks to their broken spam filters, you may have to.
        RobertRoberts 9y ago
        >Can you simply avoid emailing GMail users and continue? No, but you can learn their rules and abide by them. As I mentioned in a previous comment, I tested for why my emails were not delivered, found out the problem areas and fixed them. And now they are delivered. I have more issues with companies that run their own mail server or use smaller email companies that have overly aggressive spam filters and don't even know what a white list is. I have less issues with Gmail than them. Try making your emails text only, and get them to deliver. Google even provides guidelines on how to get email to be delivered. I suspect you have not found these rules yet (lmgtfy.com) or have competing interests that forbid you from following them.
    - bduerst 9y ago
      You're describing a monopsony, not a monopoly. And while Google has monopsonic power, it isn't the sole player in the market so it's not a true monopsony. Facebook, Twitter, and other channels have control as well. If you still disagree, look at how widespread Facebook's open graph standards are as proof of the market catering to these companies' purchasing power. Or just look at the header on the article: https://i.imgur.com/XlGgTaw.png https://i.imgur.com/XlGgTaw.png
- sam_goody 9y ago
  Their email _is_ dominant enough to be considered a monopoly. Simply because if they start pushing some format, everyone must go along with them. Your private server can afford to not be inter operable with Microsoft, Yahoo, and AOL, but not Google. And you can rest assured that email you send, anywhere, will eventually be forwarded to someone on a Google server. If not directly, than via Google Apps. But in literal terms as well: It happens all the time that I ask for someone's email, and they respond with the username and assume the "@gmail.com".
  - hrktb 9y ago
    If by Microsoft you mean Exchange server, not being compatible will be a literal deal breaker in doing business. An awful lot of big players won’t host their email on someone else’s service, so gmail is just not an option. If you deal with any business using primarily windows, there will also be a huge probability it’s running a Microsoft stack in full, from account management, email to file hosting.
  - Jyaif 9y ago
    "Your private server can afford to not be inter operable with Microsoft, Yahoo, and AOL, but not Google" Seems we are not living on the same planet.
  - corobo 9y ago
    What do they do from an SMTP point of view that's different to the usual/RFCs?
  - IncRnd 9y ago
    > Your private server can afford to not be inter operable with Microsoft, Yahoo, and AOL, but not Google. Citation needed. This is the opposite of much of the world of work, where emails often both originate and terminate in Exchange Servers, not touching gmail servers.
- phoneboy 9y ago
  Don't be ridiculous, Google is a platform company. Any service they create contributes to the same platform. Hence, if search is a monopoly so is the rest of the services.
- beagle3 9y ago
  I’m not sure gmail meets the legal definition of a monopoly, but 3 months ago, gmail started to randomly mark some of my emails “spam”, and it has caused me non trivial financial damage, as it turns out about 90% of the people I correspond with are using google’s mail servers, whether @gmail.com or through g-suite. Feels as monopolish as any other monopoly i’ve seen in technology.
  - RobertRoberts 9y ago
    People can still run their own email server if they want, and it will work just fine, and receive and deliver mail to other mail servers. A monopoly situation would have some kind of limits enforced, correct? I have dealt with spam issues with Gmail and solved them all. I send HTML formatted email to many Gmail accounts. I suspect you have not setup SPF, DKIM or are blacklisted on spam lists. Or if you've done all this, possibly the formats for your emails is suspect. Either way, it's solvable. At the very least, your clients could white list your domain. Edit: I am not saying it's pleasant, but it's hardly monopolistic behavior...
    - username223 9y ago
      > People can still run their own email server if they want, and it will work just fine,... > I suspect you have not setup SPF, DKIM or are blacklisted on spam lists. Or if you've done all this, possibly the formats for your emails is suspect. In what sense is this "work[ing] just fine?" "Sorry, we threw away your mail for some random reason, and we won't tell you about it" seems like poor service.
      - RobertRoberts 9y ago
        >"Sorry, we threw away your mail for some random reason, and we won't tell you about it" seems like poor service. I did testing and found it was not random. Also, maybe my experience running SpamAssassin in the past helped me. Look up how SpamAssassin filters emails and it may help you with your problem.
    - beagle3 9y ago
wklauss 9y ago
More important: 1. You knew the trade-off when you purchased an Apple device. 2. This is an unexpected change on a service your digital identity is tied to. That's why the equivalence the OP is making here is absurd.
- Xylakant 9y ago
  It’s not like people have been warning about (2) years ago, pointing out that tying your digital identity to a free service provider puts you at the mercy of its decision making. If people at least used their own domain and forwarded mail to gmail, the fallout would be limited. But alas, people don’t.
mankash666 9y ago
Nice try, but there's no logic to choosing restrictive technologies under the guise of the manufacturer not being a monopoly (which is debatable if the segment under consideration is "phones greater than $500"). Shooting heroin is a choice, but it isn't wise, just as choosing to institute the manufacturer as an app gatekeeper, nay UNIVERSAL overlord of the hardware, software, services & content - something unprecedented in history. And you're making me defend Google though I do not want to, but for accuracy's sake, they are neither a monopoly in email nor are they forcing other providers to choose AMP within their email. Just download all your Gmail data via IMAP and siphon it off to Apple's email client/server. And pray hard that Apple will CHOOSE to let you read emails tjhat weren't originally received/sent via their server/hardware/asshole

RobertRoberts 9y ago

Their search products are a monopoly, their email is not. I provide paid email services for my clients, they can use Gmail if they want, or not. But for SEO, it's Google all the way down...

r3bl 9y ago
There's nothing stopping end users from using non-Google search engine. Bing, Yahoo, DuckDuckGo... they're all viable products that you can use to accomplish 90ish% of what Google could find, and maybe even more now that Google strips historical data (see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16153840 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16153840, from a month ago). Since you're mentioning SEO, I just checked and 15.8% of searches for my website came from non-Google search engines in the last month (in my case, Yandex and DDG are the most popular ones). Bing is also taking a huge chunk of the traffic thanks to Windows 10 using it in the start menu, whether you like it or not. And while one example isn't viable enough to make general statements, it's clear that alternatives do exist and are used extensively. It's a product that's superior when compared to its competitors. It's not a monopoly though.
- matt4077 9y ago
  Google's market is advertising. If you want to advertise in search, you do not have the freedom to avoid Google and just spend all your money with Bing.
- akvadrako 9y ago
  Bing, Yahoo and DuckDuckGo are not a list of competitors. Yahoo is based on Bing & Google¹. DDG uses a lot of sources, but I believe the bulk of results come from Yahoo and Bing. I agree there are options, but they are Bing and Yandex. The others are just mashups. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahoo!_Search https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahoo!_Search
- KMag 9y ago
  > There's nothing stopping end users from using non-Google search engine. Just so everyone's clear, monopoly doesn't mean (nearly) 100% market share; it means a large enough market share to be able to manipulate the market. So, to elaborate on your first point, I think you're saying that the ease of switching search engines means that a market share necessary to manipulate the search market would be near 100%, much higher than Google has. Am I reading you correctly?
  - ams6110 9y ago
    Do you have an economic or legal reference for that definition of "monopoly"? Since search engines are all free to use, many of the criteria of a monopoly seem hard to apply, but the classic defintions I'm familiar with include things such as "no reasonable substitute" which is not the case for Google Search.
    - icebraining 9y ago
      Courts do not require a literal monopoly before applying rules for single firm conduct; that term is used as shorthand for a firm with significant and durable market power — that is, the long term ability to raise price or exclude competitors. That is how that term is used here: a "monopolist" is a firm with significant and durable market power. https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/competition-guidance/guide-antitrust-laws/single-firm-conduct/monopolization-defined https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/competition-guidance/guide-a...
    - bluGill 9y ago
      From wikipedia The lowest yet market share of a company considered "dominant" in the EU was 39.7% Google is dominate for sure.
- kuschku 9y ago
  Something can be a monopoly in market, but not in another. Google isn't a monopoly for users, it's a monopoly for developers. You can't get users without being on Google. Only if I can replace one company with another, at roughly equal results, can the market be considered competitive. I can't delist my site on Google and replace those users with Bing users. If each search engine had only 5% or 10% of the market, though, I could. And I might. That's what a competitive market looks like. Google is, from that perspective, a monopoly.
  - RobertRoberts 9y ago
    I would tend to agree, but not their email. That's easily replaced.
    - kuschku 9y ago
      Is it? Can you simply avoid emailing GMail users and continue? Not really. And yet, thanks to their broken spam filters, you may have to.
      - RobertRoberts 9y ago
        >Can you simply avoid emailing GMail users and continue? No, but you can learn their rules and abide by them. As I mentioned in a previous comment, I tested for why my emails were not delivered, found out the problem areas and fixed them. And now they are delivered. I have more issues with companies that run their own mail server or use smaller email companies that have overly aggressive spam filters and don't even know what a white list is. I have less issues with Gmail than them. Try making your emails text only, and get them to deliver. Google even provides guidelines on how to get email to be delivered. I suspect you have not found these rules yet (lmgtfy.com) or have competing interests that forbid you from following them.
  - bduerst 9y ago
    You're describing a monopsony, not a monopoly. And while Google has monopsonic power, it isn't the sole player in the market so it's not a true monopsony. Facebook, Twitter, and other channels have control as well. If you still disagree, look at how widespread Facebook's open graph standards are as proof of the market catering to these companies' purchasing power. Or just look at the header on the article: https://i.imgur.com/XlGgTaw.png https://i.imgur.com/XlGgTaw.png
sam_goody 9y ago
Their email _is_ dominant enough to be considered a monopoly. Simply because if they start pushing some format, everyone must go along with them. Your private server can afford to not be inter operable with Microsoft, Yahoo, and AOL, but not Google. And you can rest assured that email you send, anywhere, will eventually be forwarded to someone on a Google server. If not directly, than via Google Apps. But in literal terms as well: It happens all the time that I ask for someone's email, and they respond with the username and assume the "@gmail.com".
- hrktb 9y ago
  If by Microsoft you mean Exchange server, not being compatible will be a literal deal breaker in doing business. An awful lot of big players won’t host their email on someone else’s service, so gmail is just not an option. If you deal with any business using primarily windows, there will also be a huge probability it’s running a Microsoft stack in full, from account management, email to file hosting.
- Jyaif 9y ago
  "Your private server can afford to not be inter operable with Microsoft, Yahoo, and AOL, but not Google" Seems we are not living on the same planet.
- corobo 9y ago
  What do they do from an SMTP point of view that's different to the usual/RFCs?
- IncRnd 9y ago
  > Your private server can afford to not be inter operable with Microsoft, Yahoo, and AOL, but not Google. Citation needed. This is the opposite of much of the world of work, where emails often both originate and terminate in Exchange Servers, not touching gmail servers.
phoneboy 9y ago
Don't be ridiculous, Google is a platform company. Any service they create contributes to the same platform. Hence, if search is a monopoly so is the rest of the services.
beagle3 9y ago
I’m not sure gmail meets the legal definition of a monopoly, but 3 months ago, gmail started to randomly mark some of my emails “spam”, and it has caused me non trivial financial damage, as it turns out about 90% of the people I correspond with are using google’s mail servers, whether @gmail.com or through g-suite. Feels as monopolish as any other monopoly i’ve seen in technology.
- RobertRoberts 9y ago
  People can still run their own email server if they want, and it will work just fine, and receive and deliver mail to other mail servers. A monopoly situation would have some kind of limits enforced, correct? I have dealt with spam issues with Gmail and solved them all. I send HTML formatted email to many Gmail accounts. I suspect you have not setup SPF, DKIM or are blacklisted on spam lists. Or if you've done all this, possibly the formats for your emails is suspect. Either way, it's solvable. At the very least, your clients could white list your domain. Edit: I am not saying it's pleasant, but it's hardly monopolistic behavior...
  - username223 9y ago
    > People can still run their own email server if they want, and it will work just fine,... > I suspect you have not setup SPF, DKIM or are blacklisted on spam lists. Or if you've done all this, possibly the formats for your emails is suspect. In what sense is this "work[ing] just fine?" "Sorry, we threw away your mail for some random reason, and we won't tell you about it" seems like poor service.
    - RobertRoberts 9y ago
      >"Sorry, we threw away your mail for some random reason, and we won't tell you about it" seems like poor service. I did testing and found it was not random. Also, maybe my experience running SpamAssassin in the past helped me. Look up how SpamAssassin filters emails and it may help you with your problem.
  - beagle3 9y ago

wklauss 9y ago

More important: 1. You knew the trade-off when you purchased an Apple device. 2. This is an unexpected change on a service your digital identity is tied to. That's why the equivalence the OP is making here is absurd.

Xylakant 9y ago
It’s not like people have been warning about (2) years ago, pointing out that tying your digital identity to a free service provider puts you at the mercy of its decision making. If people at least used their own domain and forwarded mail to gmail, the fallout would be limited. But alas, people don’t.

mankash666 9y ago

Nice try, but there's no logic to choosing restrictive technologies under the guise of the manufacturer not being a monopoly (which is debatable if the segment under consideration is "phones greater than $500"). Shooting heroin is a choice, but it isn't wise, just as choosing to institute the manufacturer as an app gatekeeper, nay UNIVERSAL overlord of the hardware, software, services & content - something unprecedented in history. And you're making me defend Google though I do not want to, but for accuracy's sake, they are neither a monopoly in email nor are they forcing other providers to choose AMP within their email. Just download all your Gmail data via IMAP and siphon it off to Apple's email client/server. And pray hard that Apple will CHOOSE to let you read emails tjhat weren't originally received/sent via their server/hardware/asshole