3 ms·

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

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.
- toast0 8y ago
  Crawling the web is very resource intensive. You'll need thousands of machines, and probably a pretty sizable IPv4 allocation to go with that. You'll find that people allow GoogleBot and maybe a few other crawlers, but don't allow you -- because crawling causes too much load on their site. Once you have a snapshot of the web, you have two problems. The first is that your snapshot is out of date; you're going to have to continuously update it. The second is you have to figure out how to turn that enormous data into something useful. That's probably going to take thousands more servers, plus or minus lots of development to figure out what's useful. And then, if you do manage to decent results, you have two more problems. speed -- to compete with Google, you need to be fast, and to be fast, you need to be close to users, which means you need datacenters spread throughout your market area. Even if your results are objectively and subjectively better if blind compared, people are going to prefer the google results because they have google branding. It's not an insurmountable barrier, but it's pretty big.
  - diminoten 8y ago
    None of this sounds like "barriers" in the sense that I need to do any of this to release a search engine. My engine may be utterly terrible, but the barriers aren't to entry, they're to competence. That seems fine to me. You have to be better than the competition to enter the market, or have some kind of innovation that obsoletes their business method. Makes sense!

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.

toast0 8y ago
Crawling the web is very resource intensive. You'll need thousands of machines, and probably a pretty sizable IPv4 allocation to go with that. You'll find that people allow GoogleBot and maybe a few other crawlers, but don't allow you -- because crawling causes too much load on their site. Once you have a snapshot of the web, you have two problems. The first is that your snapshot is out of date; you're going to have to continuously update it. The second is you have to figure out how to turn that enormous data into something useful. That's probably going to take thousands more servers, plus or minus lots of development to figure out what's useful. And then, if you do manage to decent results, you have two more problems. speed -- to compete with Google, you need to be fast, and to be fast, you need to be close to users, which means you need datacenters spread throughout your market area. Even if your results are objectively and subjectively better if blind compared, people are going to prefer the google results because they have google branding. It's not an insurmountable barrier, but it's pretty big.
- diminoten 8y ago
  None of this sounds like "barriers" in the sense that I need to do any of this to release a search engine. My engine may be utterly terrible, but the barriers aren't to entry, they're to competence. That seems fine to me. You have to be better than the competition to enter the market, or have some kind of innovation that obsoletes their business method. Makes sense!