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Disagree in that they’ve already done plenty of damage. Easiest example is with RSS - entered the RSS Reader market for free and at a loss and effectively kill
by hysan 6y ago
Disagree in that they’ve already done plenty of damage.
Easiest example is with RSS - entered the RSS Reader market for free and at a loss and effectively killed competition because you cannot compete with that. Then subsequently killed Google Reader. This chain of moves essentially drove RSS to being obsolete which in turn made everyone far more reliant on Google and social media.
Now extend this to other products that they’ve started for free and subsequently killed. It’s not the same as embrace, extend, extinguish, but the result is the same. You kill off competition and stunt progress.
- beagle3 6y agoI don’t think RSS is a good example. Everyone I know who used google reader switched to a different RSS reader; It’s mostly that RSS isn’t monetizable as easily as web pages. I think FB and Twitter dropping their feeds had a more significant effect; regardless, RSS was always niche.
- DoctorNick 6y agoYeah, they all realized how much tracking and advert impressions you lose with RSS. It seems like that's happened with a lot of web technologies that aren't conducive to that since Google's taken the reins.
- hysan 6y agoIf we’re going to go with anecdotes, I can counter with all of my friends (entirely non-technical) simply stopped consuming via RSS because there were no alternatives at that time that ticked all the boxes. For me, the key is that Google Reader actually killed off competing products during its existence. Then when they killed of Google Reader, that stunted the ecosystem because anyone who wanted to provide an alternative was starting from the ground up. All the time that could have been spent driving RSS forward was instead spent on catchup. FB and Twitter dropping their feeds may not have happened if the RSS ecosystem evolved to benefit them in some way.
- specialist 6y agoNow occurs to me that one could clone any given Google service (product), ensure maximum compatibility, wait for Google to biff, and then welcome all the orphans.