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> To play Devil's advocate, how many of those would exist if they had been separate. Who knows? How many alternatives died or resolved themselves to relative

> To play Devil's advocate, how many of those would exist if they had been separate. Who knows? How many alternatives died or resolved themselves to relative obscurity because Google managed to get a strangle hold on the market before their competitors could establish themselves? Maybe Windows Phone would still exist. Maybe we'd be much further along with a truly open mobile Linux platform. Maybe Firefox wouldn't be slowly fading into obscurity. Maybe Opera would be one of the top browsers. Maybe Edge would still be developing its own browser tech instead of just reskinning Chromium. Maybe OSM would be the most popular map provider. Maybe Vimeo would be the go-to platform for video hosting. Maybe people would prefer store their files on Box. Maybe ads would have never have become such a popular monetization strategy and we might have seen some new and innovative strategies in its place. Who knows?

nicebyte 6y ago
what i hear you saying is "maybe we'd be stuck with half-assed shitty map software, half-assed shitty browsers, and half-assed shitty video sharing services".
- coldtea 6y ago
  Funny, since both Google Maps and YouTube were acquired, not developed by the monopoly Google. If anything Google made Maps shittier over time (similarly to how they've managed to fuck over their own GMail offering). As for Chrome, that was originally developed by KDE devs first and Apple second into a modern browser engine. The innovation part was theirs. Google just adopted it wholesale in the beggining, and started monopolizing its steering...
  - colejohnson66 6y ago
    > As for Chrome, that was originally developed by KDE devs first and Apple second into a modern browser engine. The innovation part was theirs. Google just adopted it wholesale in the beggining, and started monopolizing its steering... That’s... not how that works. You’re talking about WebKit, but the innovation of Chrome was separate processes for everything so a crash anywhere wouldn’t take down the whole browser. Sure, they’ve gone a bit “mad with power,” but to claim Google did nothing in the beginning is ignoring reality.
    - CivBase 6y ago
      > the innovation of Chrome was separate processes for everything I'd argue that's more of an evolution than an innovation. It had only just become normal for home and office PCs to feature multi-core processors. High capacity RAM was becoming relatively cheap compared to other PC components. We were still in the early days of webapps and social media. The concept of "browser tabs" was still new. Google had the advantage of starting from ground zero, so they could consider these new trends as part of their design. Incumbents had to re-work their existing tech to take advantage of those trends.

nicebyte 6y ago

what i hear you saying is "maybe we'd be stuck with half-assed shitty map software, half-assed shitty browsers, and half-assed shitty video sharing services".

coldtea 6y ago
Funny, since both Google Maps and YouTube were acquired, not developed by the monopoly Google. If anything Google made Maps shittier over time (similarly to how they've managed to fuck over their own GMail offering). As for Chrome, that was originally developed by KDE devs first and Apple second into a modern browser engine. The innovation part was theirs. Google just adopted it wholesale in the beggining, and started monopolizing its steering...
- colejohnson66 6y ago
  > As for Chrome, that was originally developed by KDE devs first and Apple second into a modern browser engine. The innovation part was theirs. Google just adopted it wholesale in the beggining, and started monopolizing its steering... That’s... not how that works. You’re talking about WebKit, but the innovation of Chrome was separate processes for everything so a crash anywhere wouldn’t take down the whole browser. Sure, they’ve gone a bit “mad with power,” but to claim Google did nothing in the beginning is ignoring reality.
  - CivBase 6y ago
    > the innovation of Chrome was separate processes for everything I'd argue that's more of an evolution than an innovation. It had only just become normal for home and office PCs to feature multi-core processors. High capacity RAM was becoming relatively cheap compared to other PC components. We were still in the early days of webapps and social media. The concept of "browser tabs" was still new. Google had the advantage of starting from ground zero, so they could consider these new trends as part of their design. Incumbents had to re-work their existing tech to take advantage of those trends.