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Since the article is login-walled I can only generally comment. The hard part of competing against Google is they have seemingly infinite discretionary money an

Since the article is login-walled I can only generally comment. The hard part of competing against Google is they have seemingly infinite discretionary money and computing power to throw at a problem. Normal businesses have to be profitable to survive, but Google can subsidize loss leaders with their advertising/search profits and still win in the end because it all feeds into their data collection and strengthens their core business. Meanwhile competitors in this areas get squeezed out. Take Google Flights for example. They purchased ITA and eventually closed external API access. The expensive computations are likely done via GCP for a cheaper rate. Travel sites pay billions of dollars to Google for ad rankings, yet Google can still promote their travel tools (search "Flights to San Francisco" to see a custom UI that links to Google Flights) in search results, and once you book a flight it creates a trip for you in Gmail. See: https://www.pymnts.com/antitrust/2020/google-under-fire-allegedly-promoting-own-travel-service-over-others/ https://www.pymnts.com/antitrust/2020/google-under-fire-alle... Disclaimer: I do work for a competitor but this is just my own personal observation.

kumarvvr 6y ago
The Achilles heel of Google is stricter privacy laws. Every other threat pales in comparison. Apple can survive, and in fact thrives in an environment where privacy takes paramount importance. Google cannot. Even FB may swim through, as it is driven by user actions. People post on it, share articles, chat on it, etc. Google has a big moat now, and that moat will vanish if people start getting serious about privacy.
- mrep 6y ago
  Really? I'd say it's the exact opposite between Facebook and Google. Google gets the majority of their ad revenue from search and search ads for me at least are always based on exactly what you are searching for. The other data is only useful seems to only be used for their ads on other peoples websites but that's only like 15% of their revenue. Facebook on the other hand advertises essentially based on your browser history and not on the content around it so they'd get hosed on stricter privacy laws.

kumarvvr 6y ago

The Achilles heel of Google is stricter privacy laws. Every other threat pales in comparison. Apple can survive, and in fact thrives in an environment where privacy takes paramount importance. Google cannot. Even FB may swim through, as it is driven by user actions. People post on it, share articles, chat on it, etc. Google has a big moat now, and that moat will vanish if people start getting serious about privacy.

mrep 6y ago
Really? I'd say it's the exact opposite between Facebook and Google. Google gets the majority of their ad revenue from search and search ads for me at least are always based on exactly what you are searching for. The other data is only useful seems to only be used for their ads on other peoples websites but that's only like 15% of their revenue. Facebook on the other hand advertises essentially based on your browser history and not on the content around it so they'd get hosed on stricter privacy laws.