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In the context of the article, the contrast between easy and hard mode seems to be Google and Facebook vs Airbnb and Booking, not Airbnb vs Booking. What you'r

In the context of the article, the contrast between easy and hard mode seems to be Google and Facebook vs Airbnb and Booking, not Airbnb vs Booking. What you're talking about supports this: yes, Airbnb and Uber flouted the law. But the very fact that there was regulation they had to bypass implies they were playing in a harder game, from Ben's perspective. Airbnb had to choose whether to ask for permission or beg forgiveness and chose the latter. Google never had to think about this problem.

slg 6y ago
I disagree. He defines Booking (as well as both Google and Facebook) as easy mode. From the article: >the biggest takeaway from my perspective is that Booking was drastically undervalued circa 2011...The truth is that, as I just explained, the company was playing in easy mode... Google, the Super-Aggregator, has been extracting an ever greater share of OTA margins. Indeed, that’s the downside to having a business built on easy mode: anyone else can play the game just as easily. The key difference between easy and hard mode seems to be layering on top of an existing business, service, or relationship versus creating a new business role, service, or relationship. Booking was simply a new middleman between consumers and old businesses. It was just a travel agent, but online. There was nothing unique about it or any type of moat to protect it once a bigger competitor like Google decided it wanted that market. Airbnb was connecting consumers to new businesses that wouldn't have existed without Airbnb. This was done in large part through ignoring the law and it allowed Airbnb to ramp up a business that is much harder to usurp by the likes of Google or Facebook.
- fractionalhare 6y ago
  I thought that quote was in reference to Airbnb, which was also featured in the preceding tweet about margins. But your interpretation makes more sense, so it looks like Ben is actually characterizing this as Airbnb:hard mode::Booking:easy mode. I concede the point.
  - slg 6y ago
    The distinction wasn't communicated in the most lucid way so I can certainly see how you could come away with that initial impression. And good on you for simply admitting your harmless mistake. Many people on the internet tend to get defensive and competitive in that position.
gregw2 6y ago
Google "never had to think about this (flouting the law) problem?" If by that you mean Google's OTA business, sure, but Google totally had to think about this problem in the context of their original core search engine business. They did not ask for permission, they begged for forgiveness too, if you remember the early days. They copied data from every website in existence to populate their search engine despite copyright laws, encouraged some sort of robots.txt opt-out mechanism while also ignoring the (AI-hard) need to parse legal terms of use on each website which may not have allowed their access. Later on some laws were passed to justify what they did but it was not legally a settled matter when they (and other search engines) started. Copyright is not "opt-out" process; the RIAA doesn't publish a robots.txt with their content and if they forget you have a free pass for copying some song for yourself. Copying every single word on a webpage to make money is not so clearly "fair use". I think it worked out OK, but Google totally thought a lot about this problem early on and they and other search engines tried hard to make everyone really comfortable with their approach.
- mox1 6y ago
  Completely agree. Look at this older copyright lawsuit from 2010 about copyright and video games (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MDY_Industries,_LLC_v._Blizzard_Entertainment,_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MDY_Industries,_LLC_v._Blizzar....) The court ruled that players of the game weren't owners, merely license holders. By copying the game to ram, you were bound to the Terms of Use. Replace game with website there and there is a pretty strong case for downloading, parsing (copying) and storing portions (or all of) said site, then displaying portions at a later date alongside advertisements constitutes a ToS violation, and willful infringement on Googles part. In a parallel world where yahoo, lycos, etc rules until 2010 and google is getting started, I think they get into a lot of legal trouble.
- gumby 6y ago
  > They copied data from every website in existence to populate their search engine despite copyright laws, encouraged some sort of robots.txt opt-out mechanism while also ignoring the (AI-hard) need to parse legal terms of use on each website which may not have allowed their access. As did every other search engine, and a good thing too. In general the principle of “if you don’t want people to see something don’t post it publicly” is a good principle that predates computers. As for robots.txt: don’t forget that it predated Google, even when g was just a grad school project. Nothing weird about it: we also specify how the http protocol works. Humans use “AI-hard” adaptive protocols and there’s no reason computers won’t in future, but they can’t yet and it’s not unreasonable to have to adapt to that. There are many many reasons to criticize Google but I think your argument is not one of them.

slg 6y ago

I disagree. He defines Booking (as well as both Google and Facebook) as easy mode. From the article: >the biggest takeaway from my perspective is that Booking was drastically undervalued circa 2011...The truth is that, as I just explained, the company was playing in easy mode... Google, the Super-Aggregator, has been extracting an ever greater share of OTA margins. Indeed, that’s the downside to having a business built on easy mode: anyone else can play the game just as easily. The key difference between easy and hard mode seems to be layering on top of an existing business, service, or relationship versus creating a new business role, service, or relationship. Booking was simply a new middleman between consumers and old businesses. It was just a travel agent, but online. There was nothing unique about it or any type of moat to protect it once a bigger competitor like Google decided it wanted that market. Airbnb was connecting consumers to new businesses that wouldn't have existed without Airbnb. This was done in large part through ignoring the law and it allowed Airbnb to ramp up a business that is much harder to usurp by the likes of Google or Facebook.

fractionalhare 6y ago
I thought that quote was in reference to Airbnb, which was also featured in the preceding tweet about margins. But your interpretation makes more sense, so it looks like Ben is actually characterizing this as Airbnb:hard mode::Booking:easy mode. I concede the point.
- slg 6y ago
  The distinction wasn't communicated in the most lucid way so I can certainly see how you could come away with that initial impression. And good on you for simply admitting your harmless mistake. Many people on the internet tend to get defensive and competitive in that position.

gregw2 6y ago

Google "never had to think about this (flouting the law) problem?" If by that you mean Google's OTA business, sure, but Google totally had to think about this problem in the context of their original core search engine business. They did not ask for permission, they begged for forgiveness too, if you remember the early days. They copied data from every website in existence to populate their search engine despite copyright laws, encouraged some sort of robots.txt opt-out mechanism while also ignoring the (AI-hard) need to parse legal terms of use on each website which may not have allowed their access. Later on some laws were passed to justify what they did but it was not legally a settled matter when they (and other search engines) started. Copyright is not "opt-out" process; the RIAA doesn't publish a robots.txt with their content and if they forget you have a free pass for copying some song for yourself. Copying every single word on a webpage to make money is not so clearly "fair use". I think it worked out OK, but Google totally thought a lot about this problem early on and they and other search engines tried hard to make everyone really comfortable with their approach.

mox1 6y ago
Completely agree. Look at this older copyright lawsuit from 2010 about copyright and video games (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MDY_Industries,_LLC_v._Blizzard_Entertainment,_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MDY_Industries,_LLC_v._Blizzar....) The court ruled that players of the game weren't owners, merely license holders. By copying the game to ram, you were bound to the Terms of Use. Replace game with website there and there is a pretty strong case for downloading, parsing (copying) and storing portions (or all of) said site, then displaying portions at a later date alongside advertisements constitutes a ToS violation, and willful infringement on Googles part. In a parallel world where yahoo, lycos, etc rules until 2010 and google is getting started, I think they get into a lot of legal trouble.
gumby 6y ago
> They copied data from every website in existence to populate their search engine despite copyright laws, encouraged some sort of robots.txt opt-out mechanism while also ignoring the (AI-hard) need to parse legal terms of use on each website which may not have allowed their access. As did every other search engine, and a good thing too. In general the principle of “if you don’t want people to see something don’t post it publicly” is a good principle that predates computers. As for robots.txt: don’t forget that it predated Google, even when g was just a grad school project. Nothing weird about it: we also specify how the http protocol works. Humans use “AI-hard” adaptive protocols and there’s no reason computers won’t in future, but they can’t yet and it’s not unreasonable to have to adapt to that. There are many many reasons to criticize Google but I think your argument is not one of them.