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> The problem is that Google is without question a monopoly Is it? I mean, sure, far more people use Google than, say, Bing or DuckDuckGo. But there's nothing
by dghf 8y ago
> The problem is that Google is without question a monopoly
Is it? I mean, sure, far more people use Google than, say, Bing or DuckDuckGo. But there's nothing actually stopping them from using those alternatives, other than the fact that they're not as good.
- zzzcpan 8y agoLack of users is stopping Google's customers from using those alternatives. Users themselves (or people) are not the customers.
- mcintyre1994 8y agoThat's obviously correct, but it seems weird to use a different metric for market share and lock-in. If you define Google's customers as ad buyers, then they're very much not a monopoly, have way less than 91% market share, and their competitiors don't have a lack of users. If they have a monopoly on search because of their share of searches, then surely the relevant lock-in would be how easily users of search can move to competitors?
- zzzcpan 8y agoThink about it this way: there are plenty of products and services that you can't advertise anywhere else but on google search, so Google has a monopoly on that. This monopoly exists because of Google's abusive practices to prevent competition from entering the market it wants to own.