4 ms·

Super smart view. What's worse is when google (or other FAANGs) gets into a new product area, it in-effect suppresses development in the marketplace because ver

Super smart view. What's worse is when google (or other FAANGs) gets into a new product area, it in-effect suppresses development in the marketplace because very few people are brave/stupid enough to challenge a trillion dollar behemoth. Nobody wants to say it, but Google is basically internet government at this point, and when government starts building products instead of just directing traffic, it's going to be anti-competitive and destroy opportunity in general. How do they get out of the way and benefit while enabling growth? Move everything new into Ventures and whatever products survive on their own should be taken public in the markets and vertically dis-integrated from advertising and search. If they want to create growth, they're going to need to open it up to public markets, otherwise, they're going to be an anti-competitive monolith. It's not a charity, and it will still make bazillions, but leveraging their incumbency means they are both risk averse themselves and opportunity destroying for everyone else.

izacus 6y ago
> Super smart view. What's worse is when google (or other FAANGs) gets into a new product area, it in-effect suppresses development in the marketplace because very few people are brave/stupid enough to challenge a trillion dollar behemoth. Is that actually true though? Googles forays into many markets were usually so horrible and clumsy that better companies could just use the media attention garnered to push their superior products. Most Google beta products usually lack fundamental features, are geoblocked and completely ignore user voice. I haven't seen many of them really thrive over their better managed competition.
- badRNG 6y ago
  I think the concern is best understood with products like Chrome, AMP, and Android, not these ephemeral ventures Google typically likes to do.
- smnrchrds 6y ago
  I am sure not everyone agrees with me, but I believe Google single-handedly killed RSS by first creating Google Reader and using their power to make it ubiquitous and then killing it when there was no competition left.
  - falcolas 6y ago
    Don't forget about removing native RSS support from their browser. Combined with the knock on effects of other browsers removing support "because Google did it" or "because Google Reader is the de-facto RSS reader" hurt RSS even more.
    - beernutz 6y ago
      I am not sure where this "RSS is dead" keeps coming from, but I still use it quite happily every day.
      - falcolas 6y ago
        For sites that offer it, sure. I use it frequently with podcasts too. But the number of sites, and the easy availability of readers for it (it was built into all of the major browsers at one point), have both decreased dramatically since the early naughts. If 10% of sites offer RSS feeds, I'd personally be quite surprised.
  - teh_klev 6y ago
    I know there are alternatives, but Google Reader just worked for me and I'm still, to this day yet, quite salty that they killed it.
  - benhurmarcel 6y ago
    There was never as many options as today for reading RSS before Google Reader went away. Killing it opened the market and we got innovation.
  - chii 6y ago
    I don't believe it's entirely google's "fault" for the downfall of RSS. Websites tend to not like to have RSS support due to it directing traffic away, and thus, denying ad revenue. It also allows easier aggregation from competitors/third-parties, which also denies ad revenue. Therefore, RSS is, at most, implemented as a short excerpt, with the intention to direct the user to visit the website.
- blowski 6y ago
  I think it's possible for both statements to be true at the same time. A small company with a successful, functioning project is getting a little bit of traction when Google crashes into the market. Google bids up staff costs, uses free advertising to get customer mindshare, scares off the small company's possible investors, and acts as a huge distraction. After stumbling around for a while, Google gives up, but in the meantime, they've put the small company out of business. Of course, the small company might get extra attention which they can use to their advantage, but it will be hard.
  - acdha 6y ago
    They also don’t always leave the market otherwise. When they shut down Reader there was an opportunity for their competitors except that their exit told everyone that feeds were dead and you needed to jump onto Google+ (their poorly considered plan) or Facebook (anyone seeing what Google was afraid of). Depending on the market and the company’s resources that kind of image shift can have a big effect.
hirundo 6y ago
> a trillion dollar behemoth I doubted that but you're right: Company, Market Cap $billions Alphabet, 1,368 Facebook, 737 Apple, 2,296 Microsoft, 1,773 Twitter, 53
- eru 6y ago
  You should look at enterprise value, not market capitalization.
- mirajshah 6y ago
  you forgot: Amazon, 1,528
mindslight 6y ago
> Move everything new into Ventures and whatever products survive on their own should be taken public in the markets and vertically dis-integrated from advertising and search This would severely dilute their brand though. All of these tech companies are implicitly promising unknown future magic through the power of technology, eventually. If Google admits that the peak of their business has come and they are now a boring mature company ("nothing but rabbits come out of the hat"), I can't see their stonk price nor their mindshare with early adopters doing well.
- tomatotomato37 6y ago
  I wouldn't be so sure of that. Microsoft went through the transition from hip new thing to office & office accessories and yet they're still worth more than Google. A company deciding to slow down and swap reckless innovation for methodological reliability can be seen as a boom by the risk-adverse; remember, no one was fired for buying IBM.
- motohagiography 6y ago
  To extend that metaphor, I'd say google needs to start stuffing more rabbits into hats, because if nobody stuffs those hats, we're all going to run out of rabbits. To do that, it means spinning off companies to go public that create wealth across a broader base of investors and innovators, instead of presuming the hive-mind monoculture of their organization can keep producing things people want. There is an inflection point the OP makes about resource cursed economies, which is that when you have money coming out of the ground, you don't need to provide anything to your citizens in exchange for their tax base, and you get tyranny, because you don't need to pay anyone except the army to keep you in power. By extension, Google could just flip the EVIL switch that they so strenuously tried to protect, and it would have zero negative effect on their bottom line. They don't have to produce anything else to maintain their dominant position, and this is the danger the OP I think has illustrated.
  - mindslight 6y ago
    I don't disagree, but you didn't really engage with what I said - it is not in Google's interest to pivot their institutional position to being boring. Their entire brand to employees, investors, and data subjects is that they do cool new things. That brand keeps interest in and softens the reality of their core surveillance business. It's akin to how I've heard VFX houses operate - the side of the business doing commercials makes the profit, while the movies side of the business loses money but brings the notoriety.
ymolodtsov 6y ago
There's only a few areas where Google really was a threat to early-stage startups. The things they're great at by simply being such a behemoth with a ton of infrastructure willing to give away a lot for free or where their AI expertise comes in handy. Search, obviously. The ads network. Competitors for Gmail are way smaller but they exist, since you don't need network effect, thankfully. Google Photos – I knew a startup that was developing a similar product for a year and then Photos launches and they decided to give up, because they couldn't match the free tier or provide enough justification for a paid product. Of course you need to be giant to take a shot at something like Stadia. But you can compete with almost everything else. Notion, Airtable and Coda are fine, even though it'd be smart for Google to finally add a new, more modern product to Workplace. Google Tasks hasn't killed a single task manager. Google+ killed neither Facebook nor Snapchat. Just read some stories from the founder of Waze: https://marker.medium.com/why-theres-no-such-thing-as-a-startup-within-a-big-company-c3003615f3bc https://marker.medium.com/why-theres-no-such-thing-as-a-star...

izacus 6y ago

> Super smart view. What's worse is when google (or other FAANGs) gets into a new product area, it in-effect suppresses development in the marketplace because very few people are brave/stupid enough to challenge a trillion dollar behemoth. Is that actually true though? Googles forays into many markets were usually so horrible and clumsy that better companies could just use the media attention garnered to push their superior products. Most Google beta products usually lack fundamental features, are geoblocked and completely ignore user voice. I haven't seen many of them really thrive over their better managed competition.

badRNG 6y ago
I think the concern is best understood with products like Chrome, AMP, and Android, not these ephemeral ventures Google typically likes to do.
smnrchrds 6y ago
I am sure not everyone agrees with me, but I believe Google single-handedly killed RSS by first creating Google Reader and using their power to make it ubiquitous and then killing it when there was no competition left.
- falcolas 6y ago
  Don't forget about removing native RSS support from their browser. Combined with the knock on effects of other browsers removing support "because Google did it" or "because Google Reader is the de-facto RSS reader" hurt RSS even more.
  - beernutz 6y ago
    I am not sure where this "RSS is dead" keeps coming from, but I still use it quite happily every day.
    - falcolas 6y ago
      For sites that offer it, sure. I use it frequently with podcasts too. But the number of sites, and the easy availability of readers for it (it was built into all of the major browsers at one point), have both decreased dramatically since the early naughts. If 10% of sites offer RSS feeds, I'd personally be quite surprised.
- teh_klev 6y ago
  I know there are alternatives, but Google Reader just worked for me and I'm still, to this day yet, quite salty that they killed it.
- benhurmarcel 6y ago
  There was never as many options as today for reading RSS before Google Reader went away. Killing it opened the market and we got innovation.
- chii 6y ago
  I don't believe it's entirely google's "fault" for the downfall of RSS. Websites tend to not like to have RSS support due to it directing traffic away, and thus, denying ad revenue. It also allows easier aggregation from competitors/third-parties, which also denies ad revenue. Therefore, RSS is, at most, implemented as a short excerpt, with the intention to direct the user to visit the website.
blowski 6y ago
I think it's possible for both statements to be true at the same time. A small company with a successful, functioning project is getting a little bit of traction when Google crashes into the market. Google bids up staff costs, uses free advertising to get customer mindshare, scares off the small company's possible investors, and acts as a huge distraction. After stumbling around for a while, Google gives up, but in the meantime, they've put the small company out of business. Of course, the small company might get extra attention which they can use to their advantage, but it will be hard.
- acdha 6y ago
  They also don’t always leave the market otherwise. When they shut down Reader there was an opportunity for their competitors except that their exit told everyone that feeds were dead and you needed to jump onto Google+ (their poorly considered plan) or Facebook (anyone seeing what Google was afraid of). Depending on the market and the company’s resources that kind of image shift can have a big effect.

hirundo 6y ago

> a trillion dollar behemoth I doubted that but you're right: Company, Market Cap $billions Alphabet, 1,368 Facebook, 737 Apple, 2,296 Microsoft, 1,773 Twitter, 53

eru 6y ago
You should look at enterprise value, not market capitalization.
mirajshah 6y ago
you forgot: Amazon, 1,528

mindslight 6y ago

> Move everything new into Ventures and whatever products survive on their own should be taken public in the markets and vertically dis-integrated from advertising and search This would severely dilute their brand though. All of these tech companies are implicitly promising unknown future magic through the power of technology, eventually. If Google admits that the peak of their business has come and they are now a boring mature company ("nothing but rabbits come out of the hat"), I can't see their stonk price nor their mindshare with early adopters doing well.

tomatotomato37 6y ago
I wouldn't be so sure of that. Microsoft went through the transition from hip new thing to office & office accessories and yet they're still worth more than Google. A company deciding to slow down and swap reckless innovation for methodological reliability can be seen as a boom by the risk-adverse; remember, no one was fired for buying IBM.
motohagiography 6y ago
To extend that metaphor, I'd say google needs to start stuffing more rabbits into hats, because if nobody stuffs those hats, we're all going to run out of rabbits. To do that, it means spinning off companies to go public that create wealth across a broader base of investors and innovators, instead of presuming the hive-mind monoculture of their organization can keep producing things people want. There is an inflection point the OP makes about resource cursed economies, which is that when you have money coming out of the ground, you don't need to provide anything to your citizens in exchange for their tax base, and you get tyranny, because you don't need to pay anyone except the army to keep you in power. By extension, Google could just flip the EVIL switch that they so strenuously tried to protect, and it would have zero negative effect on their bottom line. They don't have to produce anything else to maintain their dominant position, and this is the danger the OP I think has illustrated.
- mindslight 6y ago
  I don't disagree, but you didn't really engage with what I said - it is not in Google's interest to pivot their institutional position to being boring. Their entire brand to employees, investors, and data subjects is that they do cool new things. That brand keeps interest in and softens the reality of their core surveillance business. It's akin to how I've heard VFX houses operate - the side of the business doing commercials makes the profit, while the movies side of the business loses money but brings the notoriety.

ymolodtsov 6y ago

There's only a few areas where Google really was a threat to early-stage startups. The things they're great at by simply being such a behemoth with a ton of infrastructure willing to give away a lot for free or where their AI expertise comes in handy. Search, obviously. The ads network. Competitors for Gmail are way smaller but they exist, since you don't need network effect, thankfully. Google Photos – I knew a startup that was developing a similar product for a year and then Photos launches and they decided to give up, because they couldn't match the free tier or provide enough justification for a paid product. Of course you need to be giant to take a shot at something like Stadia. But you can compete with almost everything else. Notion, Airtable and Coda are fine, even though it'd be smart for Google to finally add a new, more modern product to Workplace. Google Tasks hasn't killed a single task manager. Google+ killed neither Facebook nor Snapchat. Just read some stories from the founder of Waze: https://marker.medium.com/why-theres-no-such-thing-as-a-startup-within-a-big-company-c3003615f3bc https://marker.medium.com/why-theres-no-such-thing-as-a-star...