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> It’s amazing how they have four monopolies and only monetize one of them. They appear to me to have begun monetizing google maps. And it is awful.
by tengbretson 6y ago
> It’s amazing how they have four monopolies and only monetize one of them.
They appear to me to have begun monetizing google maps. And it is awful.
- jtbayly 6y agoWhat are the four monopolies?
- elwell 6y agoSearch, Email, Maps (they own Waze), YouTube
- dgellow 6y agoI would say: Search, Map, Translate, Gmail. Though technically they also have YouTube and do monetize it.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- dfabulich 6y agoSearch, Maps, YouTube, Chrome. (They all have competitors, some more successful than others.) A bunch of people have listed Gmail on their lists, but Gmail is not even close to a monopoly, even in consumer email. https://email-verify.my-addr.com/list-of-most-popular-email-domains.php https://email-verify.my-addr.com/list-of-most-popular-email-...
- dgellow 6y agoI have 2 remarkes: - that's from 2016 - that seems to be worldwide (I see for example swiss and french providers in the list), which isn't necessarily relevant. Gmail can be a monopoly in the US for example, while not being one worldwide. Unfortunately I cannot find better numbers, if someone does that would be interesting to discuss.
- ashconnor 6y agoSearch, browser, email and maps.
- disease 6y agoSearch, the browser, email, non-streaming video are the only things that come to mind.
- perlgeek 6y agosearch, maps, mail (gmail), video (youtube).
- domkema 6y agoIf I had to guess what GP is referring to: search, maps, email, and browser. While I'm sure we could disagree on if Google actually has a monopoly in these domains, I think it's obvious they have a _substantial_ foothold.
- secondbreakfast 6y agoPretty much! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23632044 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23632044
- jcranmer 6y agoI just want to say that I love how the response to this comment is several lists of 4, with search being the only one present in all of them.
- secondbreakfast 6y agoThe 4 I was thinking of: Search, Maps, Gmail, YouTube Chrome is arguably a monopoly if you segment desktop web traffic, but iOS Safari is such a large percentage that Safari can't be ignored. People will disagree with email - but I challenge you to go look at email threads you're on and see what % of the emails are @gmail.com - not to mention G Suite addresses you don't know are Gmail. Outside of enterprise, there's no alternative. Not bad either that Android and Chrome are duopolies at this point.
- lostmsu 6y agoI actually don't think Gmail (as other comments here claim) is nearly as much "monopoly" as YouTube. There are many email providers, people use whatever.
- dhdersch 6y agocloud computing is one of them /s
- s3r3nity 6y agoThis is why I've switched to Apple Maps for like 98% of my navigation needs. I might be biased, because I live in one of the cities with the updated maps data, sure, but I find that it handles most of my use cases just as well as Google Maps.
- derwiki 6y agoSame, and I often use Bing maps on desktop
- moogleii 6y agoI find the Apple Maps navigation to be far more polished and human. Whenever they added "After the stop sign, at the next light turn right" made it my goto nav app. The search is still not great compared to Google Maps, though.
- lazyjones 6y agoApple maps has the following drawbacks for me: - no public transport routing where I live - much worse satellite images For all other uses, especially usability, it's superior to the extremely slow and cumbersome Google Maps. Both have odd UI bugs.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- ebg13 6y agoI want to use Apple maps, but I just can't stand that the review boxes shunt me to the app store to download the Yelp app.
- three_seagrass 6y agoProbably because those are not really monopolies. People like to conflate being popular (having large marketshare) with being a monopoly (exclusive control of supply). Being popular in those markets is likely because they do not monetize it directly.
- RonanTheGrey 6y ago> exclusive control of supply Is not the only, nor even the most useful, definition of a monopoly. And there's also not a magic moment where one second you're not a monopoly, and the next second you are when user X+1 signs up. It's a gradual process and that's why it is such a huge area of law.
- three_seagrass 6y agoMonopoly is semantically not very complicated. It's a fairly simple economic principle: - Monopoly = Exclusive control of supply - Monopsony = Exclusive control of demand If you want to redefine it to popular things, you should reflect on your motivation to do so.
- RonanTheGrey 6y agoYou might want to reflect on why you want anti-trust law to only apply to the strict definition of a monopoly. That's why it's called "anti-trust" not "anti-monopoly".
- secondbreakfast 6y agoWhat do you find awful about the monetizing on Maps? So far I've found it not very intrusive, and it seems much more clear on Maps than on Search when something is an ad.