6 ms·

I sort of agree, but part of me also thinks that if a company builds the world's best mobile OS and search engine and ad platform and video streaming service an

I sort of agree, but part of me also thinks that if a company builds the world's best mobile OS and search engine and ad platform and video streaming service and internet browser and mapping service... well, good for them! They built the best products and it seems like it would ultimately be anti-consumer to do anything about it. It's different if a company like Google establishes its dominance via one great product (search) and then wields that power to artificially protect its other lines of business through e.g. contracts, the same way Microsoft did with OEMs. Sure, nothing "illegal" about it, but ultimately, it fits the de facto understanding of antitrust being about "consumer welfare." A company leveraging its dominance in one business to exert control over others =/= a company having success because it built the best products.

shliachtx 6y ago
Except they purchased their way into many of these. Their advertising business was built on a number of acquisitions (DoubleClick, AdMob) - strategic acquisitions, surely, and they improved on them since - but it is not as if they bult the business from the ground up. The same goes for video streaming (YouTube - after attempting to create their own), and mobile OS (Android). With Android in particular it can be argued that it would not be what it is today without them, but they also heavily leveraged their other services to promote and maintain control over Android.
- tsycho 6y ago
  I see this oft repeated comment about Google acquiring YouTube, DoubleClick and Android. Yes they did. But the companies they acquired were tiny upstarts, which might have even died on their own. Google built them into what they are today, and deserve 90% of the credit for their current significance. The same applies to FB and Instagram as well, fwiw. Though imo, not as much for WhatsApp, which already had 400MM users and would have organically reached 1B+ users on its own.
  - john-radio 6y ago
    YouTube was delivering an average of 100 million video views per day in July 2006, months before the Google acquisition for $1,650,000,000 that same year. It's inaccurate to characterize them as a "tiny startup."
    - sam0x17 6y ago
      Likewise doubleclick was HUGE in the ad space I remember seeing all the doubleclick.com urls in slow page loads
    - athms 6y ago
      >It's inaccurate to characterize them as a "tiny startup." YouTube had 65 employees when they were acquired. I do agree that they were not a startup. This word should only be used for companies that are starting up; getting their legal structure together, hiring, and initial R&D. Once you are offering widgets (ad space), you are no longer a startup. Profitability is immaterial to startup status.
      - Judgmentality 6y ago
        Why does the number of employees matter? If anything that's a testament to how valuable they were, to be able to do so much with so little.
        athms 6y ago
        It doesn't. My comment was about the word tiny" and 65 is tiny especially when compared to Google.
      - romanoderoma 6y ago
        WhatsApp had 55 employees before FB acquisition
      - ulfw 6y ago
        And Instagram had like what... 8? Not every company that's successful and has millions of users needs to have a bloated org
- rstuart4133 6y ago
  > Except they purchased their way into many of these. They did. But youtube.com wasn't that big when they bought it. In fact by definition most of the things they bought (like maps.google.com) weren't big. The obvious corollary is Google is very good buy scaling something up while keeping it rock solid. And, they are. Examples of original things that did come out of Google are Kubernetes, the Site Reliability Engineering Handbook, and pulling off something I thought was impossible: Spanner, a global distributed ACID database. From what I can tell they have constructed the fastest, most reliable distributed computing platform on the planet. They are the Toyota's of the computing landscape: nothing particularly outstanding in any particular model of car, the secret sauce is the infrastructure and processes they've developed to manufacture those cars that ensures they are both cheap and reliable. And so it is with Google. They aren't particularly good at coming up with new products. In fact they often buy them. But then those products get moved onto best computing infrastructure on the planet. If the products are any good, they seemingly grow without effort to become a dominant player.
  - sharkjacobs 6y ago
    > youtube.com wasn't that big when they bought it YouTube then wasn't then anything like it is now, but it was by far the largest video website of its type. I felt like they bought it because Google Video failed to compete with it.
bumblebritches5 6y ago
Except Google didn't build those things except search. They bought Android in 2005, Youtube in 2004? and all of their other, non-search successes.
- d1zzy 6y ago
  People say this as if the entire (or majority) of Android's success rests with what they initially purchased. In my opinion it has very little to do with that and a lot more to do with the billions of dollars invested into developing, extending the platform, creating and supporting APIs, establishing contracts with OEMs, developing apps, etc etc. Android wasn't some magic thing that anyone that purchased it would have been sure to be successful. Just look at how well MS did with Nokia's purchase. So yes, Google did purchase Android but Google didn't purchase their mobile success story by purchasing Android.
  - kd913 6y ago
    The whole way that Google handled Windows Mobile was anti competitive imho. They prevented Windows Phone users from being able to access Google Maps by checking User Agents. They didn't release a native Youtube app for Windows phone, and when Microsoft wanted to make one themselves they restricted them to HTML5 and non-native access. This penalized battery life on Windows Phone platforms for 2 very large and important services. Google got success with Android by frankly bullying every other viable competitor out of the market (Amazon Fire, Windows Phone) by again bullying in regards to play store services.
    - larl 6y ago
      You realize that Amazon Fire is Android, right?
- Filligree 6y ago
  Didn't GMail start as a 20% project?
  - 6y ago
LeifCarrotson 6y ago
The power that Google used to build those other lines of business was not artificial, but it was very effective. The existence of that power is anti-consumer because no one else can afford to build anything better, because Google makes more money than your hypothetical new world's best product ever by charging absolutely nothing for their competing product. Step 1, in 1997, was to build the world's best search engine. Step 2, was that running the world's best search engine allowed them to create an ad network that most accurately knew what the largest number of viewers were looking for, best ad platform and massive revenue. All others follow from that. Steps 3 and on were to start an email service (what are people talking about), create an image search tool (shows what pictures people are looking for), acquire/develop a mapping application (where are people and where are they going), acquire a video hosting platform (what are people watching), create a mobile OS (get more people on the Internet and especially on their parts of it), create a web browser (get more people on the internet and especially on their parts of it), etc. etc. etc. Those other properties only work because they're financed by and create value for Google's ad network.
- garyfirestorm 6y ago
  It sounds like you want to punish them for being successful. I still haven't seen the harm to the consumers. They build search and ad networks and email and android. I use them all the time. I now have access to youtube and infinite amount of information on it on my fingertips.
  - TheOtherHobbes 6y ago
    People who produce content for YouTube and have had content - or entire channels - removed for no good reason might disagree. Also, there's the issue of public trust. We have no choice but to trust Google not to skew its search results. It's not obvious this trust is justified. Google can literally make individuals, companies, and events disappear from the Internet. You can put up your site or your business and if Google removes you from search you might as well not exist. A moment's thought will suggest that this is exactly the same as the YouTube problem, but on a larger scale. And that's an unhealthy amount of power for a corporation that isn't subject to any oversight or accountability.
smnrchrds 6y ago
> part of me also thinks that if a company builds the world's best mobile OS and search engine and ad platform and video streaming service and internet browser and mapping service... well, good for them! We don't know if they make the best services. Perhaps there would be much better mobile OS or search engines made by others, if it were not for Google's dominant position discouraging new entrants or crushing them in their infancy.
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Supermancho 6y ago
> They built the best products and it seems like it would ultimately be anti-consumer to do anything about it. No it's not. The best XXX run by a single company, is super-effective! Allowing it, we know from all of human history, is anti-consumer.
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Razengan 6y ago
> They built the best products and it seems like it would ultimately be anti-consumer to do anything about it. > A company leveraging its dominance in one business to exert control over others =/= a company having success because it built the best products. This comment reads like it was paid for by Google, because most of that is nowhere near the truth, neither the building part nor being the best part. And boy the bias on HN is palpable when comments like this were being insta-buried when the same things were being said in favor of Apple during the Epic blitzkrieg.
- dang 6y ago
  You can't break the site guidelines like this. We've had to warn you more than once before. Would you please re-read them and stick to the rules? https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html As for "the bias on HN"—when it comes to $BigCo arguments, it's very much in the eye of the beholder. The people with opposite views to yours (for example, who like G and dislike A) complain of exactly the opposite "bias". https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=notice%20dislike%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
hyperpallium2 6y ago
They became world dictator fair and square!
- fn_bb_sqr_pnts 6y ago
  ^ this guy gets it! IBM PC dominance didn't mean much when OS became the thing. And Windows PC OS dominance didn't mean much when web became the thing. Search dominance (which is one way of interacting with the web) didn't mean much when social/eCommerce (other ways) became a thing. FB missed messaging (is messenger a thing?). What are we doing here? can we just focus on figuring out digital privacy and call it a day?
m4rtink 6y ago
I dont think one can cal Android worlds best mobile OS - one that had most money dumped on it to make the abomination usable, sure. Most pushed by a cartel (Open Hedste Aliance) mobile OS - definitely. But definitely not the best.

shliachtx 6y ago

Except they purchased their way into many of these. Their advertising business was built on a number of acquisitions (DoubleClick, AdMob) - strategic acquisitions, surely, and they improved on them since - but it is not as if they bult the business from the ground up. The same goes for video streaming (YouTube - after attempting to create their own), and mobile OS (Android). With Android in particular it can be argued that it would not be what it is today without them, but they also heavily leveraged their other services to promote and maintain control over Android.

tsycho 6y ago
I see this oft repeated comment about Google acquiring YouTube, DoubleClick and Android. Yes they did. But the companies they acquired were tiny upstarts, which might have even died on their own. Google built them into what they are today, and deserve 90% of the credit for their current significance. The same applies to FB and Instagram as well, fwiw. Though imo, not as much for WhatsApp, which already had 400MM users and would have organically reached 1B+ users on its own.
- john-radio 6y ago
  YouTube was delivering an average of 100 million video views per day in July 2006, months before the Google acquisition for $1,650,000,000 that same year. It's inaccurate to characterize them as a "tiny startup."
  - sam0x17 6y ago
    Likewise doubleclick was HUGE in the ad space I remember seeing all the doubleclick.com urls in slow page loads
  - athms 6y ago
    >It's inaccurate to characterize them as a "tiny startup." YouTube had 65 employees when they were acquired. I do agree that they were not a startup. This word should only be used for companies that are starting up; getting their legal structure together, hiring, and initial R&D. Once you are offering widgets (ad space), you are no longer a startup. Profitability is immaterial to startup status.
    - Judgmentality 6y ago
      Why does the number of employees matter? If anything that's a testament to how valuable they were, to be able to do so much with so little.
      - athms 6y ago
        It doesn't. My comment was about the word tiny" and 65 is tiny especially when compared to Google.
    - romanoderoma 6y ago
      WhatsApp had 55 employees before FB acquisition
    - ulfw 6y ago
      And Instagram had like what... 8? Not every company that's successful and has millions of users needs to have a bloated org
rstuart4133 6y ago
> Except they purchased their way into many of these. They did. But youtube.com wasn't that big when they bought it. In fact by definition most of the things they bought (like maps.google.com) weren't big. The obvious corollary is Google is very good buy scaling something up while keeping it rock solid. And, they are. Examples of original things that did come out of Google are Kubernetes, the Site Reliability Engineering Handbook, and pulling off something I thought was impossible: Spanner, a global distributed ACID database. From what I can tell they have constructed the fastest, most reliable distributed computing platform on the planet. They are the Toyota's of the computing landscape: nothing particularly outstanding in any particular model of car, the secret sauce is the infrastructure and processes they've developed to manufacture those cars that ensures they are both cheap and reliable. And so it is with Google. They aren't particularly good at coming up with new products. In fact they often buy them. But then those products get moved onto best computing infrastructure on the planet. If the products are any good, they seemingly grow without effort to become a dominant player.
- sharkjacobs 6y ago
  > youtube.com wasn't that big when they bought it YouTube then wasn't then anything like it is now, but it was by far the largest video website of its type. I felt like they bought it because Google Video failed to compete with it.

bumblebritches5 6y ago

Except Google didn't build those things except search. They bought Android in 2005, Youtube in 2004? and all of their other, non-search successes.

d1zzy 6y ago
People say this as if the entire (or majority) of Android's success rests with what they initially purchased. In my opinion it has very little to do with that and a lot more to do with the billions of dollars invested into developing, extending the platform, creating and supporting APIs, establishing contracts with OEMs, developing apps, etc etc. Android wasn't some magic thing that anyone that purchased it would have been sure to be successful. Just look at how well MS did with Nokia's purchase. So yes, Google did purchase Android but Google didn't purchase their mobile success story by purchasing Android.
- kd913 6y ago
  The whole way that Google handled Windows Mobile was anti competitive imho. They prevented Windows Phone users from being able to access Google Maps by checking User Agents. They didn't release a native Youtube app for Windows phone, and when Microsoft wanted to make one themselves they restricted them to HTML5 and non-native access. This penalized battery life on Windows Phone platforms for 2 very large and important services. Google got success with Android by frankly bullying every other viable competitor out of the market (Amazon Fire, Windows Phone) by again bullying in regards to play store services.
  - larl 6y ago
    You realize that Amazon Fire is Android, right?
Filligree 6y ago
Didn't GMail start as a 20% project?
- 6y ago

LeifCarrotson 6y ago

The power that Google used to build those other lines of business was not artificial, but it was very effective. The existence of that power is anti-consumer because no one else can afford to build anything better, because Google makes more money than your hypothetical new world's best product ever by charging absolutely nothing for their competing product. Step 1, in 1997, was to build the world's best search engine. Step 2, was that running the world's best search engine allowed them to create an ad network that most accurately knew what the largest number of viewers were looking for, best ad platform and massive revenue. All others follow from that. Steps 3 and on were to start an email service (what are people talking about), create an image search tool (shows what pictures people are looking for), acquire/develop a mapping application (where are people and where are they going), acquire a video hosting platform (what are people watching), create a mobile OS (get more people on the Internet and especially on their parts of it), create a web browser (get more people on the internet and especially on their parts of it), etc. etc. etc. Those other properties only work because they're financed by and create value for Google's ad network.

garyfirestorm 6y ago
It sounds like you want to punish them for being successful. I still haven't seen the harm to the consumers. They build search and ad networks and email and android. I use them all the time. I now have access to youtube and infinite amount of information on it on my fingertips.
- TheOtherHobbes 6y ago
  People who produce content for YouTube and have had content - or entire channels - removed for no good reason might disagree. Also, there's the issue of public trust. We have no choice but to trust Google not to skew its search results. It's not obvious this trust is justified. Google can literally make individuals, companies, and events disappear from the Internet. You can put up your site or your business and if Google removes you from search you might as well not exist. A moment's thought will suggest that this is exactly the same as the YouTube problem, but on a larger scale. And that's an unhealthy amount of power for a corporation that isn't subject to any oversight or accountability.

smnrchrds 6y ago

> part of me also thinks that if a company builds the world's best mobile OS and search engine and ad platform and video streaming service and internet browser and mapping service... well, good for them! We don't know if they make the best services. Perhaps there would be much better mobile OS or search engines made by others, if it were not for Google's dominant position discouraging new entrants or crushing them in their infancy.

deleted 6y ago

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deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

Supermancho 6y ago

> They built the best products and it seems like it would ultimately be anti-consumer to do anything about it. No it's not. The best XXX run by a single company, is super-effective! Allowing it, we know from all of human history, is anti-consumer.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

Razengan 6y ago

> They built the best products and it seems like it would ultimately be anti-consumer to do anything about it. > A company leveraging its dominance in one business to exert control over others =/= a company having success because it built the best products. This comment reads like it was paid for by Google, because most of that is nowhere near the truth, neither the building part nor being the best part. And boy the bias on HN is palpable when comments like this were being insta-buried when the same things were being said in favor of Apple during the Epic blitzkrieg.

dang 6y ago
You can't break the site guidelines like this. We've had to warn you more than once before. Would you please re-read them and stick to the rules? https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html As for "the bias on HN"—when it comes to $BigCo arguments, it's very much in the eye of the beholder. The people with opposite views to yours (for example, who like G and dislike A) complain of exactly the opposite "bias". https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=notice%20dislike%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...

hyperpallium2 6y ago

They became world dictator fair and square!

fn_bb_sqr_pnts 6y ago
^ this guy gets it! IBM PC dominance didn't mean much when OS became the thing. And Windows PC OS dominance didn't mean much when web became the thing. Search dominance (which is one way of interacting with the web) didn't mean much when social/eCommerce (other ways) became a thing. FB missed messaging (is messenger a thing?). What are we doing here? can we just focus on figuring out digital privacy and call it a day?

m4rtink 6y ago

I dont think one can cal Android worlds best mobile OS - one that had most money dumped on it to make the abomination usable, sure. Most pushed by a cartel (Open Hedste Aliance) mobile OS - definitely. But definitely not the best.