7 ms·

Yes, Google owns a significant portion of search but I don't think it qualifies as a monopoly. * They have no exclusive rights to "search". Bing, DDG, Yahoo, a

Yes, Google owns a significant portion of search but I don't think it qualifies as a monopoly. * They have no exclusive rights to "search". Bing, DDG, Yahoo, and more all compete in the same space. * They do not have a geographic right to any areas. * They are not prevent me from using another search engine I choose to use Google because it gives me the results I expect. Nobody is forcing me to use Google over other search engines. If anything, Google has raised the quality for all search engines by consistently producing the best product available.

saas_sam 8y ago
"Monopoly" now seems to mean "preferred by most people."
- krapp 8y ago
  Or "too big for me to disrupt from my garage."
  - romaniv 8y ago
    A lot of reasons search space is nearly impossible to disrupt now has to do with accidental complexity, and Google had a hand in forming many standards and trends that proliferated it.
rdlecler1 8y ago
From the standpoint of the consumer they may not have a monopoly, but from the standpoint of the website they do.
- gowld 8y ago
  The website makes effort to please Google because Google is the user's freely chosen search agent. If the users en masse chose Bing or Oath/Yahoo or DDG instead (or in addition), the website would make effort to please them instead.
  - rdlecler1 8y ago
    Nothing you’ve said contradicts the argument that they have a monopoly over websites. The fact is, is that people once chose their search engine and today they no longer make that choice even if they have the ability to exercise it.
kahnpro 8y ago
From the perspective of a website developer, Google has a monopoly.
hrktb 8y ago
It’s interesting how all these points would be super simple to validate a decade ago. > They have no exclusive rights to "search". Bing, DDG, Yahoo, and more all compete in the same space. They sponsor firefox and safari, so have exclusive rights on the default settings though. Bing can’t be the default search engine on anything with more than 10% user share. > They are not prevent me from using another search engine Android system search is locked at the maker level if they include Google Play, and isn’t bootloader locking becoming the norm, worsening the locking ?
- lkbm 8y ago
  > They sponsor firefox and safari, so have exclusive rights on the default settings though. "They pay to be the default so no one else can" is kind of a silly argument. If Yahoo had paid more and/or hadn't had terrible results, it probably still would be the default.
  - lubujackson 8y ago
    And they have the money to pay for placement because they make more money from search because everyone uses Google already... hmm. If everyone likes Google best, why do they bother paying anything for the default settings? Or are they simply protecting their dominant position by using their dominant position?
darkerside 8y ago
Nobody made anyone use the telephone network either. There were alternative, less preferred methods of long distance communication. But once an incumbent builds in self-reinforcing network effects--be they telephone lines or a rich network of data--they are able to leverage it to immense strength, left unchecked.
- joshuamorton 8y ago
  Hence the geographic control comment. There's a reason utilities are often considered natural monopolies.
- ggggtez 8y ago
  That'd be like saying Search isn't a monopoly because a library lets people find information too. No one is making anything even close to that argument, so your post is just a strawman. Search isn't a monopoly because there are other companies that do nearly the same thing, that customers can switch to them at nearly 0 cost.
  - lubujackson 8y ago
    A monopoly doesn't mean users don't have choice! Like the car manufacturing example, there are economies of scale that let Google build up external barriers and dictate anti-competitive behavior because of the dominance in the market. It isn't about user choice, it's more about website owner choice. To play off the merged car company metaphor, imagine if 80% of all cars were Ford. And Ford comes out with an electric car that is really efficient (AMP), but it really only gets that added boost if every gas station in America install a special Ford Pump that charges cars in 2 seconds. And the gas station doesn't get any money from the pumps, but since 90% of cars are Ford they better install those pumps if they want to sell chips and soda in their little store. Otherwise, everyone will just use the gas station across the street. But hey, no one is making them install those Ford Pumps! And it's great for Ford owners... until all the gas stations start to close. AMP is bad enough, but having it influence pagerank means Google is leading websites to accept AMP or immediately lose Google traffic. And because Google is dominant in providing traffic to sites, there is very little choice here for site owners and no benefit.
clairity 8y ago
a monopoly is not defined by the things you list. it is instead defined by the ability to exert disproportionate power on a market, enough to create favorable conditions for itself (i.e., it's anti-free market). it's usually characterized by a large, but not necessarily majority, market share in a given industry or segment (monopolies can have as little as 30% market share), and pricing power, both of which google has in search.
- joshuamorton 8y ago
  What is the search pricing power?
  - clairity 8y ago
    the ability to order search results and to choose when and where to display ads provides pricing power for google's many forms of advertising. and google is relatively immune to the reactions of it's competitors, like bing, in how it prices its ads.
    - joshuamorton 8y ago
      But this is true of all websites. Are you suggesting that AdWords (not AdSense) holds a plurality market share of the online ad industry? Or that search result ads should be evaluated as their own industry? The first is I believe just not true, and the second seems like an issue of p-hacking your way to a monopoly.
Yizahi 8y ago
AFAIK all these - Bing, DDG, Yahoo, and more all compete in the same space. - are simply a single search engine (Bing) with some additions over the top. I suspect that there are about 4 true search engines remaining in the world, two of which are strictly regional (Baidu and Yandex) and Bing is only remaining afloat due to sheer willpower of MS which may end abruptly, as with some other products. I consider this state (with all other factors) as effectively a monopoly.
- Yizahi 8y ago
  Just look at this graph from June 2018: https://en.wikipedia.org/api/rest_v1/page/graph/png/Web_search_engine/0/6a3d9b4f9942e83c6e212696be71a3b0bec194cb.png https://en.wikipedia.org/api/rest_v1/page/graph/png/Web_sear...
- Signez 8y ago
  Qwant is another competitor in that space, too.
  - Yizahi 8y ago
    Isn't Qwant also Bing inside plus additional stuff, just like DDG?
sonnyblarney 8y ago
None of those things necessarily constitute a monopoly - but when barriers to entry are too high to facilitate other entrants, when they have first dibs on all of the talent, deep lobbying power etc. then it can become monopolistic. A good example is their commoditization of adjacent economies: they give Android away for free to make sure that there are few competitors who can make a dime there. Apple, the biggest company on the planet, being the only one who can hold a toe in that market. Similarly as the default search engine on Chrome - Google definitely wants to make sure browsers are 'free' 'open source' etc so they can fuel the dominant entity and make sure the surpluses are captured in search, not elsewhere. Microsoft would use their monopoly power in one area (OS) and leverage that into monopoly in other areas, i.e. office software. If GM, Ford and Daimler Chrysler were to merge, they would be a monopoly even though the merged entity wouldn't meet any of the criteria you've highlighted. Google can't necessarily be described in network effects either, but generally the very fact of their market penetration almost proves that there are systematic barriers. They make gazillions of dollars - so why aren't there gazillions of competitors and tons of choice? Because of those barriers. And they will keep extending themselves as they see fit to use billions of dollars to either dominate - or remove all surpluses form adjacent industries, thereby leaving the surpluses in their core offer, like search. If you take a minute to consider why in 'free trade' deals, nations that participate are forbidden from government intervention in local companies. It's not really 'free trade' if for example the government can use tax base from the broader economy to support a strategic players and enable them to 'dump' their product on the market at what would otherwise be below market value. In that context, Google could be described as 'dumping' Android and Chrome on the market in some sense. It's definitely grey but I think it's reasonable to consider Google as a monopoly.
- diminoten 8y ago
  Are there actually barriers to search? I feel like I could start writing a web crawler and index the results with little/no real problem, other than how much worse I would be at it than Google is. Does being really good at something actually constitute a barrier for others? Practically, it definitely does, but wouldn't any check on that provide some pretty perverse incentives? Also, I don't think GM, Ford and Daimler Chrysler would merge to become a monopoly. Volkswagen, Honda, BMW all would still provide stiff competition. The thing we care about w/r/t monopolies is the stifling of innovation. Do you think innovation is being stifled, in any of the areas Google has products in? I largely do not.
ForrestN 8y ago
I don’t think anti-monopoly laws were intended to prevent the physical enslavement of customers who are begging to stop using a certain project but are forced to continue. It’s common sense. Sometimes profit-seeking companies amass an amount of power within the market that allows them to do things that are bad for their customers, bad for the market, or bad for society. Because we don’t have modern regulations in this country (sadly, Elizabeth Warren’s efforts in this direction will be thwarted by the corrupt legislators her laws would target), the cult of “delivering value to shareholders” often distorts the behavior of companies in this direction. I’m not sure about Google, but it’s a totally reasonable to be asking these questions. Whatever term you want to use, Google could have a big enough influence on the market to create outcomes (like AMP!) that are conspicuously shitty for people who use the Internet overall. That’s really important and we should stop them if that’s happening.
ChuckMcM 8y ago
This needs to be repeated because it helps to understand the issue. There are only four (4) search indexes of sufficient size in English, these are Bing, Google, Baidu (Chinese), and Yandex (Russian). Everything on the internet that calls itself a "search engine" gets its search result data from one of those four indexes. Different front ends provide different features around the results, whether it is privacy enhancement, ad enhancement, Etc. Google's English language index is generally considered the 'best' based on the depth of the index with respect to its crawl size and that index's ability to provide both good precision and recall. You can use any search site you want but you will likely be using Google search results. If you feel like you're results aren't quite as good as Google's, and you are in the US, you are probably using Bing. Neither Baidu nor Yandex have US data centers so latency to their indexes is pretty bad for most front end web sites.
- m-p-3 8y ago
  DuckDuckGo have their own crawlers right?
  - gbear605 8y ago
    They used to, but now they don’t.
    - arbie 8y ago
      Do you have a source link where I could read up on this? It would seem that DuckDuckBot is still alive and well.
      - gbear605 8y ago
        https://duck.co/help/results/ https://duck.co/help/results/ > We source from Bing, Yahoo, and Yandex.
        ChuckMcM 8y ago
        (which is kind of funny because Yahoo forwards (forwarded?) all their search traffic to Bing per their agreement with Microsoft when Microsoft didn't buy them. Not sure what Verizon does with that now.
mpclark 8y ago
It's a de facto monopoly.
nothrabannosir 8y ago
Each of those points could have been made about Windows at the time (considering Mac), yet the European antitrust commission decided it was a monopoly and fined them. Quite seriously, if memory serves. Where do those rules come from? Are they part of the official definition for monopoly? Why did the EC not deem them relevant (enough) when ruling against Microsoft? Why would they not do the same with Google (if ever relevant)? Is there official reading on this?
HIPisTheAnswer 8y ago
Ahahahahah! A monopoly, or cartel, is a business that keeps competitors from entering the fray. Please go on the street corner with your WLAN and portable server to offer search/CDN and whatever, and you'll quickly attract government thugs who will shut you down for lack of permission from the monopoly bureau (Govt regulation). So Yes it is a big, fat, and really fucking juicy monopoly. That's what govts and big corps all are, a big bunch of fascists handing each other 'licences' stipulating their exclusive self-granted right to do x or z.
mezzode 8y ago
Google to me seems like a case of natural monopoly[1]. Competition in this market is stifled by the amount of investment and infrastructure needed to make a good search engine. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_monopoly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_monopoly

saas_sam 8y ago

"Monopoly" now seems to mean "preferred by most people."

krapp 8y ago
Or "too big for me to disrupt from my garage."
- romaniv 8y ago
  A lot of reasons search space is nearly impossible to disrupt now has to do with accidental complexity, and Google had a hand in forming many standards and trends that proliferated it.

rdlecler1 8y ago

From the standpoint of the consumer they may not have a monopoly, but from the standpoint of the website they do.

gowld 8y ago
The website makes effort to please Google because Google is the user's freely chosen search agent. If the users en masse chose Bing or Oath/Yahoo or DDG instead (or in addition), the website would make effort to please them instead.
- rdlecler1 8y ago
  Nothing you’ve said contradicts the argument that they have a monopoly over websites. The fact is, is that people once chose their search engine and today they no longer make that choice even if they have the ability to exercise it.

kahnpro 8y ago

From the perspective of a website developer, Google has a monopoly.

hrktb 8y ago

It’s interesting how all these points would be super simple to validate a decade ago. > They have no exclusive rights to "search". Bing, DDG, Yahoo, and more all compete in the same space. They sponsor firefox and safari, so have exclusive rights on the default settings though. Bing can’t be the default search engine on anything with more than 10% user share. > They are not prevent me from using another search engine Android system search is locked at the maker level if they include Google Play, and isn’t bootloader locking becoming the norm, worsening the locking ?

lkbm 8y ago
> They sponsor firefox and safari, so have exclusive rights on the default settings though. "They pay to be the default so no one else can" is kind of a silly argument. If Yahoo had paid more and/or hadn't had terrible results, it probably still would be the default.
- lubujackson 8y ago
  And they have the money to pay for placement because they make more money from search because everyone uses Google already... hmm. If everyone likes Google best, why do they bother paying anything for the default settings? Or are they simply protecting their dominant position by using their dominant position?

darkerside 8y ago

Nobody made anyone use the telephone network either. There were alternative, less preferred methods of long distance communication. But once an incumbent builds in self-reinforcing network effects--be they telephone lines or a rich network of data--they are able to leverage it to immense strength, left unchecked.

joshuamorton 8y ago
Hence the geographic control comment. There's a reason utilities are often considered natural monopolies.
ggggtez 8y ago
That'd be like saying Search isn't a monopoly because a library lets people find information too. No one is making anything even close to that argument, so your post is just a strawman. Search isn't a monopoly because there are other companies that do nearly the same thing, that customers can switch to them at nearly 0 cost.
- lubujackson 8y ago
  A monopoly doesn't mean users don't have choice! Like the car manufacturing example, there are economies of scale that let Google build up external barriers and dictate anti-competitive behavior because of the dominance in the market. It isn't about user choice, it's more about website owner choice. To play off the merged car company metaphor, imagine if 80% of all cars were Ford. And Ford comes out with an electric car that is really efficient (AMP), but it really only gets that added boost if every gas station in America install a special Ford Pump that charges cars in 2 seconds. And the gas station doesn't get any money from the pumps, but since 90% of cars are Ford they better install those pumps if they want to sell chips and soda in their little store. Otherwise, everyone will just use the gas station across the street. But hey, no one is making them install those Ford Pumps! And it's great for Ford owners... until all the gas stations start to close. AMP is bad enough, but having it influence pagerank means Google is leading websites to accept AMP or immediately lose Google traffic. And because Google is dominant in providing traffic to sites, there is very little choice here for site owners and no benefit.

clairity 8y ago

a monopoly is not defined by the things you list. it is instead defined by the ability to exert disproportionate power on a market, enough to create favorable conditions for itself (i.e., it's anti-free market). it's usually characterized by a large, but not necessarily majority, market share in a given industry or segment (monopolies can have as little as 30% market share), and pricing power, both of which google has in search.

joshuamorton 8y ago
What is the search pricing power?
- clairity 8y ago
  the ability to order search results and to choose when and where to display ads provides pricing power for google's many forms of advertising. and google is relatively immune to the reactions of it's competitors, like bing, in how it prices its ads.
  - joshuamorton 8y ago
    But this is true of all websites. Are you suggesting that AdWords (not AdSense) holds a plurality market share of the online ad industry? Or that search result ads should be evaluated as their own industry? The first is I believe just not true, and the second seems like an issue of p-hacking your way to a monopoly.

Yizahi 8y ago

AFAIK all these - Bing, DDG, Yahoo, and more all compete in the same space. - are simply a single search engine (Bing) with some additions over the top. I suspect that there are about 4 true search engines remaining in the world, two of which are strictly regional (Baidu and Yandex) and Bing is only remaining afloat due to sheer willpower of MS which may end abruptly, as with some other products. I consider this state (with all other factors) as effectively a monopoly.

Yizahi 8y ago
Just look at this graph from June 2018: https://en.wikipedia.org/api/rest_v1/page/graph/png/Web_search_engine/0/6a3d9b4f9942e83c6e212696be71a3b0bec194cb.png https://en.wikipedia.org/api/rest_v1/page/graph/png/Web_sear...
Signez 8y ago
Qwant is another competitor in that space, too.
- Yizahi 8y ago
  Isn't Qwant also Bing inside plus additional stuff, just like DDG?

sonnyblarney 8y ago

None of those things necessarily constitute a monopoly - but when barriers to entry are too high to facilitate other entrants, when they have first dibs on all of the talent, deep lobbying power etc. then it can become monopolistic. A good example is their commoditization of adjacent economies: they give Android away for free to make sure that there are few competitors who can make a dime there. Apple, the biggest company on the planet, being the only one who can hold a toe in that market. Similarly as the default search engine on Chrome - Google definitely wants to make sure browsers are 'free' 'open source' etc so they can fuel the dominant entity and make sure the surpluses are captured in search, not elsewhere. Microsoft would use their monopoly power in one area (OS) and leverage that into monopoly in other areas, i.e. office software. If GM, Ford and Daimler Chrysler were to merge, they would be a monopoly even though the merged entity wouldn't meet any of the criteria you've highlighted. Google can't necessarily be described in network effects either, but generally the very fact of their market penetration almost proves that there are systematic barriers. They make gazillions of dollars - so why aren't there gazillions of competitors and tons of choice? Because of those barriers. And they will keep extending themselves as they see fit to use billions of dollars to either dominate - or remove all surpluses form adjacent industries, thereby leaving the surpluses in their core offer, like search. If you take a minute to consider why in 'free trade' deals, nations that participate are forbidden from government intervention in local companies. It's not really 'free trade' if for example the government can use tax base from the broader economy to support a strategic players and enable them to 'dump' their product on the market at what would otherwise be below market value. In that context, Google could be described as 'dumping' Android and Chrome on the market in some sense. It's definitely grey but I think it's reasonable to consider Google as a monopoly.

diminoten 8y ago
Are there actually barriers to search? I feel like I could start writing a web crawler and index the results with little/no real problem, other than how much worse I would be at it than Google is. Does being really good at something actually constitute a barrier for others? Practically, it definitely does, but wouldn't any check on that provide some pretty perverse incentives? Also, I don't think GM, Ford and Daimler Chrysler would merge to become a monopoly. Volkswagen, Honda, BMW all would still provide stiff competition. The thing we care about w/r/t monopolies is the stifling of innovation. Do you think innovation is being stifled, in any of the areas Google has products in? I largely do not.

ForrestN 8y ago

I don’t think anti-monopoly laws were intended to prevent the physical enslavement of customers who are begging to stop using a certain project but are forced to continue. It’s common sense. Sometimes profit-seeking companies amass an amount of power within the market that allows them to do things that are bad for their customers, bad for the market, or bad for society. Because we don’t have modern regulations in this country (sadly, Elizabeth Warren’s efforts in this direction will be thwarted by the corrupt legislators her laws would target), the cult of “delivering value to shareholders” often distorts the behavior of companies in this direction. I’m not sure about Google, but it’s a totally reasonable to be asking these questions. Whatever term you want to use, Google could have a big enough influence on the market to create outcomes (like AMP!) that are conspicuously shitty for people who use the Internet overall. That’s really important and we should stop them if that’s happening.

ChuckMcM 8y ago

This needs to be repeated because it helps to understand the issue. There are only four (4) search indexes of sufficient size in English, these are Bing, Google, Baidu (Chinese), and Yandex (Russian). Everything on the internet that calls itself a "search engine" gets its search result data from one of those four indexes. Different front ends provide different features around the results, whether it is privacy enhancement, ad enhancement, Etc. Google's English language index is generally considered the 'best' based on the depth of the index with respect to its crawl size and that index's ability to provide both good precision and recall. You can use any search site you want but you will likely be using Google search results. If you feel like you're results aren't quite as good as Google's, and you are in the US, you are probably using Bing. Neither Baidu nor Yandex have US data centers so latency to their indexes is pretty bad for most front end web sites.

m-p-3 8y ago
DuckDuckGo have their own crawlers right?
- gbear605 8y ago
  They used to, but now they don’t.
  - arbie 8y ago
    Do you have a source link where I could read up on this? It would seem that DuckDuckBot is still alive and well.
    - gbear605 8y ago
      https://duck.co/help/results/ https://duck.co/help/results/ > We source from Bing, Yahoo, and Yandex.
      - ChuckMcM 8y ago
        (which is kind of funny because Yahoo forwards (forwarded?) all their search traffic to Bing per their agreement with Microsoft when Microsoft didn't buy them. Not sure what Verizon does with that now.

mpclark 8y ago

It's a de facto monopoly.

nothrabannosir 8y ago

Each of those points could have been made about Windows at the time (considering Mac), yet the European antitrust commission decided it was a monopoly and fined them. Quite seriously, if memory serves. Where do those rules come from? Are they part of the official definition for monopoly? Why did the EC not deem them relevant (enough) when ruling against Microsoft? Why would they not do the same with Google (if ever relevant)? Is there official reading on this?

HIPisTheAnswer 8y ago

Ahahahahah! A monopoly, or cartel, is a business that keeps competitors from entering the fray. Please go on the street corner with your WLAN and portable server to offer search/CDN and whatever, and you'll quickly attract government thugs who will shut you down for lack of permission from the monopoly bureau (Govt regulation). So Yes it is a big, fat, and really fucking juicy monopoly. That's what govts and big corps all are, a big bunch of fascists handing each other 'licences' stipulating their exclusive self-granted right to do x or z.

mezzode 8y ago

Google to me seems like a case of natural monopoly[1]. Competition in this market is stifled by the amount of investment and infrastructure needed to make a good search engine. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_monopoly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_monopoly