7 ms·

Google reportedly keeps tabs on usage of rival apps to develop competitors

30 points by lladnar 6y ago

Shared404 6y ago
tldr: Large corporation abuses power to maintain position. Unfortunately, nothing will change until consumers start noticing/caring about these sort of things. Government regulation will just cause it to become more hidden. Or I'm horribly misunderstanding the situation. It wouldn't be the first time.
- auganov 6y ago
  Who says it's bad for consumers? Big corporations are monitoring what's popular to develop their own offerings in these markets. For consumers it means more choice and potentially better products. It's bad for startups which obviously don't want competition from stronger players.
  - thomk 6y ago
    Having less options because one giant company ate up all the small companies is always bad for consumers. Competition is good for consumers. Monopolies are good for corporations.
    - auganov 6y ago
      This is not done by just one giant company. Many majors like Amazon and Facebook have been reported to have similar strategies. This is competition. All the giants want to grow. That's the name of the game. Google is now said to be going against Amazon (and a ton of small e commerce startups) with their product search offering. Yes, when it comes to booting rival apps off app stores and so forth, I agree, it's a problem. It should be looked at. But developing copy cat products is unavoidable[0]. Let's say we ban big corps from doing this. Then you'll just see them funding it. This has been going on forever. Most of the time it's just knocking out an undercapitalized startup and actually bringing the product to a much bigger audience at a better price point. The consumer wins. [0] where IP issues don't apply
      - thomk 6y ago
        I feel like the problem has more to do with big players owning the app stores. They have access to all of the data that allows them to know which apps are popular and profitable. It's easier for them to know which apps to knock off; the own the data that tells them that.
        auganov 6y ago
        I don't know, I feel like they just have access to this data so they're using it. There are many 3rd party app store intelligence products out there. And you can buy incredible datasets from some tracking companies. There are only as many popular things out there, have a hard time believing that they fundamentally wouldn't be able to do it without the more privileged access. Wouldn't be surprised if they are actually using a ton of 3rd party data too, but only this kind of usage makes headlines as it seems "wrong".
  - RedBeetDeadpool 6y ago
    Is it really? Big Corp destroys competition, gains monopoly, stops innovating, and then they hike up prices. Look at what autodesk has done for the 3D-software industry. AutoCAD is a bloated piece of crap and hasn’t changed much in years yet everyone drawing details uses it because of file system monopoly And industry standard. Same can be said for revit. 3ds max and maya are all in one modeling/texturing/animation software that just repeat the offering of what the other does just with a different interface, both of which are clunky and outdated. Oh and they also have the benefit of being industry standard so if you work in a team, likely you have it just so you can modify files. I could go on but this is classic Autodesk, and they aren’t the only company that does this. We the consumers are ultimately the ones to pay for the disproportional power dynamics, while big megacorp keeps the dough.
  - Proven 6y ago
    You're right. In this case Google develops (largely) free features or apps and (largely) monetizes them with ads. One should also wonder why startups want to free-ride on Chrome and then complain about Google harvesting this info when they could help drive users to community browsers (the answer is obvious: they don't want to spend their money and they'd prefer that taxpayer or government does that for them). Those who call this situation a monopoly are closet socialists who well know that even Chrome users can use Chromium or Edge or other flavors but use the M word to create outrage that would lead to higher taxes or government-forced breakups of Google and other dominant internet players in the US. I don't use Chrome (I use alternative browsers) because I don't like Google. Ocassionally, when I want to, I use Google Search Engine. What monopoly?
- arp242 6y ago
  > Government regulation will just cause it to become more hidden. That's such a weird take; should we stop banning murder, rape, and theft now, as it will just become "more hidden"?
  - Shared404 6y ago
    This is a fair point. What I intended to mean was not that we should not regulate against it, but that regulation will be ineffective.
    - invisiblerobot 6y ago
      If you believe regulation to be ineffective then why advocate for it at all?
      - Shared404 6y ago
        Much like regulation does not outright prevent the above crimes, it does reduce them. Same would go for something like this, I would think.
bavell 6y ago
Whenever I see headlines like this I think, "... Duh? Of course they do, along with many other underhanded tactics". Perhaps I'm just cynical and know a little too much of what happens behind the curtains in large tech companies...
haecceity 6y ago
In some companies (that also has a platform of some kind, where they have information that would give them an advantage over everyone else in the market), it's not allowed to act on this information unless its released to the public. It's anti-competitive in some way. The group that collects the information is not allowed to share the information with the product group. Does anyone know legal basis for this policy?

30 points by lladnar 6y ago

tldr: Large corporation abuses power to maintain position. Unfortunately, nothing will change until consumers start noticing/caring about these sort of things. Government regulation will just cause it to become more hidden. Or I'm horribly misunderstanding the situation. It wouldn't be the first time.

auganov 6y ago
Who says it's bad for consumers? Big corporations are monitoring what's popular to develop their own offerings in these markets. For consumers it means more choice and potentially better products. It's bad for startups which obviously don't want competition from stronger players.
- thomk 6y ago
  Having less options because one giant company ate up all the small companies is always bad for consumers. Competition is good for consumers. Monopolies are good for corporations.
  - auganov 6y ago
    This is not done by just one giant company. Many majors like Amazon and Facebook have been reported to have similar strategies. This is competition. All the giants want to grow. That's the name of the game. Google is now said to be going against Amazon (and a ton of small e commerce startups) with their product search offering. Yes, when it comes to booting rival apps off app stores and so forth, I agree, it's a problem. It should be looked at. But developing copy cat products is unavoidable[0]. Let's say we ban big corps from doing this. Then you'll just see them funding it. This has been going on forever. Most of the time it's just knocking out an undercapitalized startup and actually bringing the product to a much bigger audience at a better price point. The consumer wins. [0] where IP issues don't apply
    - thomk 6y ago
      I feel like the problem has more to do with big players owning the app stores. They have access to all of the data that allows them to know which apps are popular and profitable. It's easier for them to know which apps to knock off; the own the data that tells them that.
      - auganov 6y ago
        I don't know, I feel like they just have access to this data so they're using it. There are many 3rd party app store intelligence products out there. And you can buy incredible datasets from some tracking companies. There are only as many popular things out there, have a hard time believing that they fundamentally wouldn't be able to do it without the more privileged access. Wouldn't be surprised if they are actually using a ton of 3rd party data too, but only this kind of usage makes headlines as it seems "wrong".
- RedBeetDeadpool 6y ago
  Is it really? Big Corp destroys competition, gains monopoly, stops innovating, and then they hike up prices. Look at what autodesk has done for the 3D-software industry. AutoCAD is a bloated piece of crap and hasn’t changed much in years yet everyone drawing details uses it because of file system monopoly And industry standard. Same can be said for revit. 3ds max and maya are all in one modeling/texturing/animation software that just repeat the offering of what the other does just with a different interface, both of which are clunky and outdated. Oh and they also have the benefit of being industry standard so if you work in a team, likely you have it just so you can modify files. I could go on but this is classic Autodesk, and they aren’t the only company that does this. We the consumers are ultimately the ones to pay for the disproportional power dynamics, while big megacorp keeps the dough.
- Proven 6y ago
  You're right. In this case Google develops (largely) free features or apps and (largely) monetizes them with ads. One should also wonder why startups want to free-ride on Chrome and then complain about Google harvesting this info when they could help drive users to community browsers (the answer is obvious: they don't want to spend their money and they'd prefer that taxpayer or government does that for them). Those who call this situation a monopoly are closet socialists who well know that even Chrome users can use Chromium or Edge or other flavors but use the M word to create outrage that would lead to higher taxes or government-forced breakups of Google and other dominant internet players in the US. I don't use Chrome (I use alternative browsers) because I don't like Google. Ocassionally, when I want to, I use Google Search Engine. What monopoly?
arp242 6y ago
> Government regulation will just cause it to become more hidden. That's such a weird take; should we stop banning murder, rape, and theft now, as it will just become "more hidden"?
- Shared404 6y ago
  This is a fair point. What I intended to mean was not that we should not regulate against it, but that regulation will be ineffective.
  - invisiblerobot 6y ago
    If you believe regulation to be ineffective then why advocate for it at all?
    - Shared404 6y ago
      Much like regulation does not outright prevent the above crimes, it does reduce them. Same would go for something like this, I would think.

bavell 6y ago

Whenever I see headlines like this I think, "... Duh? Of course they do, along with many other underhanded tactics". Perhaps I'm just cynical and know a little too much of what happens behind the curtains in large tech companies...

haecceity 6y ago

In some companies (that also has a platform of some kind, where they have information that would give them an advantage over everyone else in the market), it's not allowed to act on this information unless its released to the public. It's anti-competitive in some way. The group that collects the information is not allowed to share the information with the product group. Does anyone know legal basis for this policy?