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Google has lock-in with search, and Facebook has lock-in with social networking Argh, how does Google have lock-in with search? The minute Google stops deliver

by donaq 15y ago

Google has lock-in with search, and Facebook has lock-in with social networking Argh, how does Google have lock-in with search? The minute Google stops delivering relevant results, you can switch search engines with practically no cost.

cj 15y ago
"The minute Google stops delivering relevant results" That's the thing. Amazon has a better product search, IMDB has better movie search, and StackOverflow has better results for technical question. Google doesn't necessarily provide the best results for all queries, but people still use it because it's easy, even though it's not the best. In that way, Google has lock-in with search.
- cageface 15y ago
  Generality and lock-in are two completely different things. I can do exactly what you describe just as easily with Bing.
  - jmarbach 15y ago
    With the addition of products such as Google+, Google is aiming to secure on their lock-in by harnessing more personal data about you. Besides Facebook, Google provides the most personally relevant results. As long as you continue to log-in to Google services, Google will have a lock-in on personally relevant search.
    - cageface 15y ago
      I strongly doubt that search personalization is going to to be effective enough to create any real lock-in. Google+ is more about preventing Facebook from locking out screen space for Google's ads.
    - rmrm 15y ago
      That is not lock-in, in and of itself. It is valuable data (for both Google and yourself), but it isn't lock in. Getting your data back out in a way that is useful to someone else, making my history portable is what mitigates lock-in. Lack of portability and exchangeability of things you own, not the usefulness of a service, is the hallmark of vendor lock-in. I can actually get my web history on Google, Google provides an XML feed of searches I could take and give to someone else if I wanted to -- but it only covers a 1 month snapshot. It has the term I searched for, and the link I clicked on. That is a pretty good corpus of information about me. Google could provide all of my web history, that would be a very positive sign of non lock-in behavior. Maybe they do somewhere, but I don't see it on the DLF page. So I agree with you that they could do more. But I disagree with your apparent reasoning as to what lock-in actually means.

by donaq 15y ago

cj 15y ago

"The minute Google stops delivering relevant results" That's the thing. Amazon has a better product search, IMDB has better movie search, and StackOverflow has better results for technical question. Google doesn't necessarily provide the best results for all queries, but people still use it because it's easy, even though it's not the best. In that way, Google has lock-in with search.

cageface 15y ago
Generality and lock-in are two completely different things. I can do exactly what you describe just as easily with Bing.
- jmarbach 15y ago
  With the addition of products such as Google+, Google is aiming to secure on their lock-in by harnessing more personal data about you. Besides Facebook, Google provides the most personally relevant results. As long as you continue to log-in to Google services, Google will have a lock-in on personally relevant search.
  - cageface 15y ago
    I strongly doubt that search personalization is going to to be effective enough to create any real lock-in. Google+ is more about preventing Facebook from locking out screen space for Google's ads.
  - rmrm 15y ago
    That is not lock-in, in and of itself. It is valuable data (for both Google and yourself), but it isn't lock in. Getting your data back out in a way that is useful to someone else, making my history portable is what mitigates lock-in. Lack of portability and exchangeability of things you own, not the usefulness of a service, is the hallmark of vendor lock-in. I can actually get my web history on Google, Google provides an XML feed of searches I could take and give to someone else if I wanted to -- but it only covers a 1 month snapshot. It has the term I searched for, and the link I clicked on. That is a pretty good corpus of information about me. Google could provide all of my web history, that would be a very positive sign of non lock-in behavior. Maybe they do somewhere, but I don't see it on the DLF page. So I agree with you that they could do more. But I disagree with your apparent reasoning as to what lock-in actually means.