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This is simply a virtual form of real estate business. As real estate brokers say, the price depends mostly on 3 things: location, location and location. If yo
by snidane 7y ago
This is simply a virtual form of real estate business.
As real estate brokers say, the price depends mostly on 3 things: location, location and location. If you are on Manhattan you pay more for that land than far away in Brooklyn. Similarly with the Domain Name System - shorter domain like www.abc.com is more desirable than www.hdhfjenyrj.goobledygook. There is no scarcity of string combinations for domain names yet people fight for desirable ones by paying a lot of money. It's a form of congestion pricing around naturally formed monopoly in desirable locations or domains.
These big tech platforms create their own land online - virtual estate. Limited human attention creates the scarcity of valuable locations where advertisers would like to show their ads. So they compete for being shown on Manhattan of the web - Google's top of the search results and Facebook's feed. The platforms can charge them huge monopoly, real estate like, prices for it.
- Mordisquitos 7y agoWhere that analogy falls short is that if a given company pays for cheap and/or inferior real estate, you will still find that company if you explicitly go to their physical location – you don't have to walk past four competitors who paid extra for the right to stand in their driveway.
- lotsofpulp 7y agoHow is Google's website analogous to someone's driveway? "Explicitly going to their location" is typing their website into the address bar, and as far as I know, there is no interference by Google there.
- batty_alex 7y agoThis just isn't how a majority of people find sites, though. To your normal users, google may as well be the address bar. Hell, I've watched users go to google, type facebook.com (or wherever they're going) into google, and then click on the first ad link. So, you have this situation where typing basecamp.com into google may not bring basecamp as the first result and the people buying the ads know that.
- lotsofpulp 7y agoHence snidane's comment about location location location is accurate. Google owns a coveted location, and now they can charge rent for it. Apple owns a coveted location, and charges Google rent for it. But it could not be simpler or easier to bypass Google.
- yabadabadoes 7y ago> But it could not be simpler or easier to bypass Google. Really? Unless you pay Apple considerably more, you will have a google search bar prominently on your phone that you can gimp but cant hide or change to another search provider.
- lotsofpulp 7y agoI was thinking about on a desktop, but even on mobile, tapping the browser icon and then tapping the address bar is not a burden from my perspective. Perhaps google is abusing their position as makers of Android, but it’s tough to see a argument to not let them put their own search bar on their own software.
- yabadabadoes 7y agoA profit model based on the defaults is certainly pretty reasonable, and eforcing that on manufacturers is perhaps logical, but if a company is afraid of letting the user change the defaults to use different combinations of products that they prefer then you are basically the reason for antitrust legislation. (Either the products require this coercion, few people would switch or you are using a product in one area to prevent new competition in another.)
- mokus 7y agoI have been racking my brain for several minutes now trying to figure out what you’re taking about. I never paid Apple anything to switch my Safari search bar to DuckDuckGo, and I can’t imagine 3rd party browsers are restricted from using a plain address bar or any search provider they want
- marcosdumay 7y agoThat was true a couple of decades ago. Notice that there aren't address bars on most browsers people use nowadays, and the change happened pretty much due to Google's interference.
- lotsofpulp 7y agoI don’t know what your definition of address bar is, but all 4 of the big browsers have a space at the top where you can enter a full website address and be taken directly to the website.
- yabadabadoes 7y agoReplace monopoly google with monopoly clear channel and you have exactly that problem. Your landlord might be renting the wall next to your driveway to Clear Channel or the neighbor might own it and rent it to them. But if it can fit a billboard and be seen from the street it will have one in metro areas where that isn't illegal. (Additionally) they* have been known to be geo-targeted on particular firms/individuals to mislead, i.e. make the purchaser believe they got better coverage. Probably the most famous example is hiding them from a target instead: https://www.pajiba.com/celebrities_are_better_than_you/the-longrunning-feud-between-disney-and-robin-williams-that-grew-out-of-aladdin.php https://www.pajiba.com/celebrities_are_better_than_you/the-l... [*] To be clearer, they == "poster campaigns", I have no idea about specific roles to say they = "Clear Channel" in examples of targeted/misleading campaigns.
- toss1 7y agoWhich is exactly why some companies have an explicit strategy of placing their locations on the same location as their competitors. IIRC, this happens often in the franchising industry, where a stronger competitor (e.g., McDonald's) will work to position new stores on the same location/intersection as a weaker one (e.g., Wendy's or Burger King). The new location might not be as profitable as their normal criteria, but it will weaken their competitors' profits.
- k__ 7y agoLike with everything: Don't play their games, play your own. I got a short and cheap domain name because I didn't buy a .com or .io domain. But yes, especially with real estate it's often hard to say "Oh SF is expensive? Guess I'll work remote and buy a house in the countryside"
- Can_Not 7y agoRegistrars still charge exorbitant prices for short domain names outside of com and io.
- throwaway-1436 7y agoI like your explanation better. The general concept is hidden in the original essay. How did you figure out the generalization?