3 ms·

How does the benefit from a search engine and an office suite belonging to the same company?

• burnte 6y ago
  That's the worst way to come at the question, because then you're judging why a company does two things and you're dangerously close to overregulating. For decades GE made light bulbs, aircraft engines, washing machines, and nuclear reactors, and there was nothing wrong with it. Why can't Google make a search engine, and an office suite? My question here was how would would we benefit from the breakup? And how would some products which are dependent on he search revenue survive? At least they sell GSuite so it's an actual competitor to Office.Chrome is just to get more people using a browser that makes more web experiences better so they'll use more Google products.
  • anoncake 6y ago
    It is not a problem if a company makes two (or more) separate products. But it is when these products are integrated into each other in ways that aren't open to others, or when there are any kinds of deals where you get a product for free for or at a lower price if you also buy another. These things discourage customers from mixing products from different companies, thus reducing competition. Another way to look at it is that there are two ways for a large company to get its software to work well with others: Either it participates in open standards, or it creates its own ecosystem to lock its customers into. The former is better for customers, but companies obviously choose the latter. So we need to take that option away from them. I don't know if this applies to Google Docs and search. It might have been a bad example. If a product can't survive on its own, it should die – that is how a market economy works.