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The only reason Google can be Google is economy of scale. No matter how friendly you make the marketplace for proto-Google hopefuls, they an never even approach

The only reason Google can be Google is economy of scale. No matter how friendly you make the marketplace for proto-Google hopefuls, they an never even approach the infrastructure capable of making the same product. Telecom and the like are the same, competition leads to fragmentation and destruction of opportunity. Monopolies lead to bad platforms, but platforms that hit the scale divided and broken half solutions never will.

roenxi 6y ago
That is a theory; not necessarily a decided reality. Google is an ad company; their product is an audience and an advertising system. There is no reason that advertising should be untouchable except at scale. There are plenty of tiny players who eke out a profitable existence at small scale with ads. It is likely there is a path from there up into a mega-giant if someone really goes to look for it. If anything, advertising might suffer diseconomies of scale for most products. Small businesses want to advertise locally.
- bobdole12345 6y ago
  Google is a search engine company that gives better results because it has more opportunities to improve the product with each request it sees. Advertising is the same way: The more opportunities you have to try matching a person with a thing they might like, the more you'll learn. Google is on a scale that are likely two orders of magnitude more than their closest competitor. Hilariously, Google is by far the best at mapping local people with local businesses, as they've mapped most commercial centers, and run heavy machine learning across them to extract information their competitors can't even hope to try for another decade.
- sytelus 6y ago
  Each search costs 0.0003 kWh of energy in Google infrastructure. That's just energy bill. Now think about massive infrastructure that is out there giving you sub-second results for 40,000 queries each second all over the world. Think about the man power that does on day-in day-out to make sure things are not gamed in constant war of SEO. I highly doubt Google can function in same way without economy of scale.
buzzkillington 6y ago
That is a feature, not a bug. Fragmentation leads to protocols instead of products which is why we have the internet instead of whatever monstrosity Bell would have produced had the arpanet never happened.
- bobdole12345 6y ago
  Yes, that's why the US has the most absurd cell phone network even while I sit in Silicon Valley, but I don't have reception in a half dozen places during my commute, or in my home. Why I pay absurd amounts more for my healthcare, even when I can choose between several different insurance companies. That's why my power in a massive center in California is completely unreliable here, I've experienced more power failures in the past year in a major city than I did in 30 years in the middle of fucking nowhere Canada. Because competition makes it work.
  - buzzkillington 6y ago
    Natural monopolies are best run by the government. That's why Mussolini got the trains to run on time. He also used them to ship all the Jews to concentration camps, but what's a few million lives compared to being slightly inconvenienced?
    - 8note 6y ago
      Some of them got on ships, where the Americans competed to see who could send the most back, of course
    - vkou 6y ago
      This is false. Italy did not ship its Jews to concentration camps during WWII. After Italy switches sides, and joined the Allies, the Germans, who quickly occupied northern Italy immediately started carrying out the Holocaust. They were not very successful, because of resistance and non-cooperation by Italian civilian authorities. Less than 10% of Italy's jewish population died in the Holocaust. (Compared to 50% of Romania's, 90% of Poland's, 70% of Hungary's, 30% of Austria's, and 90% of Greece's)
tarsinge 6y ago
I wouldn’t be so sure of that. Their edge in search and email is eroding. The general public wouldn’t see much difference if their default search engine was DDG. Not saying it’s not a monopoly, but I see it more as brand power than impossible to match by competition. Same for email or maps, you can switch on a individual level for nearly the same experience. I’m way more concerned by Facebook in terms of monopoly, because here I truly don’t have a choice between products, just to opt out with social consequences. That’s not the case with search or email.

roenxi 6y ago

That is a theory; not necessarily a decided reality. Google is an ad company; their product is an audience and an advertising system. There is no reason that advertising should be untouchable except at scale. There are plenty of tiny players who eke out a profitable existence at small scale with ads. It is likely there is a path from there up into a mega-giant if someone really goes to look for it. If anything, advertising might suffer diseconomies of scale for most products. Small businesses want to advertise locally.

bobdole12345 6y ago
Google is a search engine company that gives better results because it has more opportunities to improve the product with each request it sees. Advertising is the same way: The more opportunities you have to try matching a person with a thing they might like, the more you'll learn. Google is on a scale that are likely two orders of magnitude more than their closest competitor. Hilariously, Google is by far the best at mapping local people with local businesses, as they've mapped most commercial centers, and run heavy machine learning across them to extract information their competitors can't even hope to try for another decade.
sytelus 6y ago
Each search costs 0.0003 kWh of energy in Google infrastructure. That's just energy bill. Now think about massive infrastructure that is out there giving you sub-second results for 40,000 queries each second all over the world. Think about the man power that does on day-in day-out to make sure things are not gamed in constant war of SEO. I highly doubt Google can function in same way without economy of scale.

buzzkillington 6y ago

That is a feature, not a bug. Fragmentation leads to protocols instead of products which is why we have the internet instead of whatever monstrosity Bell would have produced had the arpanet never happened.

bobdole12345 6y ago
Yes, that's why the US has the most absurd cell phone network even while I sit in Silicon Valley, but I don't have reception in a half dozen places during my commute, or in my home. Why I pay absurd amounts more for my healthcare, even when I can choose between several different insurance companies. That's why my power in a massive center in California is completely unreliable here, I've experienced more power failures in the past year in a major city than I did in 30 years in the middle of fucking nowhere Canada. Because competition makes it work.
- buzzkillington 6y ago
  Natural monopolies are best run by the government. That's why Mussolini got the trains to run on time. He also used them to ship all the Jews to concentration camps, but what's a few million lives compared to being slightly inconvenienced?
  - 8note 6y ago
    Some of them got on ships, where the Americans competed to see who could send the most back, of course
  - vkou 6y ago
    This is false. Italy did not ship its Jews to concentration camps during WWII. After Italy switches sides, and joined the Allies, the Germans, who quickly occupied northern Italy immediately started carrying out the Holocaust. They were not very successful, because of resistance and non-cooperation by Italian civilian authorities. Less than 10% of Italy's jewish population died in the Holocaust. (Compared to 50% of Romania's, 90% of Poland's, 70% of Hungary's, 30% of Austria's, and 90% of Greece's)

tarsinge 6y ago

I wouldn’t be so sure of that. Their edge in search and email is eroding. The general public wouldn’t see much difference if their default search engine was DDG. Not saying it’s not a monopoly, but I see it more as brand power than impossible to match by competition. Same for email or maps, you can switch on a individual level for nearly the same experience. I’m way more concerned by Facebook in terms of monopoly, because here I truly don’t have a choice between products, just to opt out with social consequences. That’s not the case with search or email.