8 ms·

Google's Competitors Falsely Claim Google Dominates Because It Was 'First'

113 points by nextparadigms 15y ago

jpalomaki 15y ago
"They dominate just because they got there first" An argument quite often used by those who can't compete on the same level. Google is leading not because they were the first, but because they serve their customers well and continue to evolve. Go to the Google blogs and you will see great examples about how they spend lot of time trying to understand what users are meaning with their queries and refining the search to provide more relevant results.
PaulHoule 15y ago
It was the first one that didn't suck and it was the first one that made money. Infoseek was the first search engine I saw. They were thinking of charging people for subscriptions. Altavista came out with a bigger and fresher index, for a year or two they were the best, but they were being totally rolled by spammers, just like the others. Then there was Google, which was spam resistant and much more relevant than the competition. Then Google figured out how to make money and nobody's caught up since. Arguably Bing "doesn't suck" but it doesn't make money.
- boredguy8 15y ago
  "It was the first one that didn't suck" That's also untrue. I remember being viscerally mad at Yahoo for moving away from Inktomi because Inktomi results were much better for what I searched for...or I had gotten my searches to work for Inktomi. Who cares? Eventually, Google got better, and I started using them. I use a lot of Google services, but when I search the web I use Google because it works. Searches have very little traction. The only thing it takes to move my searches elsewhere is consistently better results. All it takes for me to try a new search engine is Google not working well a few more times a month.
  - InclinedPlane 15y ago
    Lycos was ok in the super early days but as the amount of content increased a simple search engine was no longer effective. Inktomi was great because it didn't have portal-bloat and it had pretty high quality results. But when google came around it blew everyone out of the water because not only were the results generally of higher quality but it was enormously faster. Combined with a smart datacenter strategy and a smart advertising strategy they dominated the market with ease. Edit: To follow up, google was able to deliver better results (due to pagerank) faster (due to map/reduce and sharding) cheaper (due to highly automated data centers filled with commodity hardware). This combination set them up for dominance, the ability to generate better, more context appropriate ads (due to pagerank, map/reduce, etc, etc. and an effectively massive excess of processing power per search) and the ability to be profitable at a much lower CPM for ads (due to cheaper operations) was what allowed them to become a multi-billion dollar company and leave all other search companies in the dust.
  - bad_user 15y ago
    Before using Google, I have been using both Altavista and Yahoo for searches. The results from those older search engines really sucked for me. I remember sitting at a local Internet Cafe, frustrated that I wasn't finding what I searched for. The I saw somebody using Google and thought I should give it a try. The difference that I experienced with Google was humongous, and it made an instant convert out of me, even though in general I'm pretty conservative about throwing away tools that work. Really, it wasn't even funny how better Google was. This was happening in 2001.
- zobzu 15y ago
  To be honest Google results start to have a lot of spam in them. Even the US results. In the past, US results were rather clear, and localized ones for most other countries were .. well.. not very good. Bing doesn't really do better, but that's the state of the engines right now anyway. If you look for something specific, Google dumbs it out too. In the early days it didn't do that and you could search for good stuff. Now you get what everyone gets, whatever you're typing.
  - fhars 15y ago
    Sometimes it helps to put a plus in front of every search term, that does at least prevent google from replacing the most specific term of your query with the least specific misspelling. That is especially helpful for programming terms that are minor variations of human language terms, just compare the searches scala hlist and +scala +hlist Thw first doesn't contain a single result that is relevant to the query.
    - ac-slater 15y ago
      In my experience the results of those two queries are almost identical: http://imgur.com/a/qGVAn#3ilhM http://imgur.com/a/qGVAn#3ilhM
- 5hoom 15y ago
  Exactly. In the 90's I remember using Lycos, Altavista, HotBot, AskJeeves and others which have faded from my memory. Then along came this new 'google' search engine & I never went back to the others. I still have a note scribbled on an old address book (the dead tree kind) saying "www.google.com - it's a new search engine". It was certainly not 'the first'. Just the first really good one.
  - colechristensen 15y ago
    Highway 61 was the greatest! It combined results from several of the popular engines and provided the best results until google came along. http://web.archive.org/web/19980205031323/http://www.highway61.com/ http://web.archive.org/web/19980205031323/http://www.highway... /nostalgia
    - alex_c 15y ago
      Same with Ixquick. Looks like it's still around, and going for the "privacy" angle, like DDG. http://ixquick.com/ http://ixquick.com/
- ohyes 15y ago
  My favorite was Dogpile. edit: it still exists. I still like dogpile.
- ori_b 15y ago
  > It was the first one that didn't suck and it was the first one that made money. That's a bit of a tautology. "It dominates because it was the first to produce a dominant product."
kevingadd 15y ago
When people testify before congress like this, is it under oath? Lying to congress should be considered perjury.
- staunch 15y ago
  It is under oath. This is not the kind of thing that should be prosecuted. Jeez.
  - wpietri 15y ago
    Why not? A paid mouthpiece saying something false in order to mislead Congress into doing what his paymasters want seems like a serious issue to me.
    - dissident 15y ago
      He might be saying something false, but he's saying something he believes is true. They're not asking him for an account on some event that took place, they're asking for an opinion. Lying under oath has to be a clear and deliberate misrepresentation of the truth. That can't be proven in this case. It's a perfectly valid opinion to believe that Google is successful because it was first, whether you agree with that opinion or not.
      - TillE 15y ago
        > It's a perfectly valid opinion No it isn't. It's factually false.
      - brown9-2 15y ago
        Is believing that the sun revolves around the earth a valid opinion?
        Natsu 15y ago
        It is if you accept relativity's statement that there is no privileged reference frame. That said, you'd have to be clueless to think that there were no search engines before Google. Haven't they at least heard of Yahoo?
staunch 15y ago
By "got there first" he could quite likely mean that they were the first to achieve search market domination, which is entirely true.
- felipemnoa 15y ago
  Is there any indication that that is what he meant?
  - ohashi 15y ago
    It seems like a pretty ridiculous definition considering the words chosen. Getting there first implies doing something first. Google didn't invent search nor did it invent the business model of PPC (GoTo/Overture did it - who were bought by YAHOO).
- anamax 15y ago
  > he could quite likely mean that [google was] the first to achieve search market domination, which is entirely true. What definition of "search market domination" are we using such that that is true? I'm pretty sure that Altavista had a huge market share at its peak and I suspect that it wasn't the first one to have a comparable share.
jinushaun 15y ago
First?! Geez louise, I still remember the day when I first heard about Google while talking to a computer nerd friend of mine over AIM. We were probably discussing an article on Slashdot. I still remember the days when I was constantly evangelising the awesomeness of Google and secretly changing the default home page for everyone else in my family. Good riddance Yahoo, Infoseek, Lycos and Altavista. Good riddance sneaky sponsored search results.
mbesto 15y ago
> Being first to market does grant a significant advantage. This was the first comment I saw on the article and I immediately began to cringe. This is so dead WRONG! For the life of me I can't find the reference but I believe their is a book that talks solely how being first in a market is a massive myth.
- kenjackson 15y ago
  It can be a big advantage. In a commodity market, which search has become, it's huge. And the other type of market is one with huge network effects. Beating Facebook will be hard regardless of your feature set.
  - taeric 15y ago
    You realize that Facebook was hardly first into this market, right? Same with Google.
    - kenjackson 15y ago
      Facebook was the first I know in this market. Others competed in similar markets, from SixDegrees to BlackVoices, but sufficiently different in that they weren't attempting as broad of an appeal. Google was the first to the "search only" market. Well after AltaVista abandoned it. When Google came on the scene search engines were a feature of portals. They made the market of the search-engine only destination.
      - mbesto 15y ago
        > Facebook was the first I know in this market. And herein lies the fallacy and the confirmation bias that exists about the success of companies. Just because you know it to be first doesn't mean it was the first to market. > Well after AltaVista abandoned it. So you're saying AltaVista was first? (technically it wasn't) scratches head
        kenjackson 15y ago
felipemnoa 15y ago
Wow, the arguments as to why google is a monopoly are almost surreal. It seems that the main argument is that they have a better/popular product and hence they should be punished for that. Whomever is pulling the strings from behind is really playing dirty. I hope it comes back to bite them in the ass big time. This whole thing looks too much like a witch hunt.
- aristus 15y ago
  You are offended because Google is being held to a different standard, and you are right. That's the whole point. Monopolies are held to a different standard. This exercise is about determining whether a) Google enjoys a monopoly and b) has abused it to the detriment of competition. The nature of this process is ugly, and everyone involved is self-interested. But I don't think it is a "witch hunt". The question is not whether Google does good work, or that its search engine is popular on its own brand & merit. It does and it is. The question is whether Google is using its dominance in one area (telling people where things are) to gain dominance in other areas (telling people to use its products over others). Even if Google's non-search products are objectively better, it can be a bad thing in the long run as the next generation of competitors are locked out by Google's dominance in search. Defenses like "competition is one click away" are disingenuous, in my opinion. Clicks follow a power-law distribution. But I don't know what the right answer is. This might all be sour grapes. That's what the hearings and investigation are supposed to reveal.
  - yoyar 15y ago
    So, Google does a bunch of good work and people choose to use their service. The US is bankrupt and the economy is screwed. And the congress is spending time persecuting a successful company. BTW, Google isn't the only one. See: Gibson guitars. It doesn't surprise me that people don't want to do business in the US anymore.
    - aristus 15y ago
      Congress is spending time investigating whether this company has become so successful that it is a defacto a monopoly and has abused its position. These two questions are not settled. Gibson was investigated along with other companies for price-fixing. That's more collusion / cartel stuff, but it also falls under anti-trust. The word "trust" is not an accident. When you do good work and capture the lion's share of a market, you are then subject to a much higher standard than otherwise. Even little things you do can kill whole markets. It's not pretty, and I haven't made up my own mind. But so far this investigation does not appear to be frivolous or arbitrary.
itswindy 15y ago
That's besides the point, even if the writer is 112% correct. What you do with the power you have now, no matter how you got it matters. But advertising based search engines are biased, they will want you to click on ads and will favor their partners (brands.) Larry and Sergey were right, it's a shame they fell for a few $billion more: "Currently, the predominant business model for commercial search engines is advertising. The goals of the advertising business model do not always correspond to providing quality search to users." "But less blatant bias are likely to be tolerated by the market. For example, a search engine could add a small factor to search results from "friendly" companies, and subtract a factor from results from competitors. This type of bias is very difficult to detect but could still have a significant effect on the market. Furthermore, advertising income often provides an incentive to provide poor quality search results."
- itswindy 15y ago
  For those that didn't notice, this is from Larry and Sergey's original PageRank paper http://infolab.stanford.edu/~backrub/google.html http://infolab.stanford.edu/~backrub/google.html , before Eric Schmidt showed up as the "adult." Google is now the largest advertiser on earth. I agree 100% with them here!
j_col 15y ago
Using their search home page recently to promote their new social network, for example? Pretty hard to compete with that kind of marketing coverage if you were trying to launch your own social network...

113 points by nextparadigms 15y ago

"They dominate just because they got there first" An argument quite often used by those who can't compete on the same level. Google is leading not because they were the first, but because they serve their customers well and continue to evolve. Go to the Google blogs and you will see great examples about how they spend lot of time trying to understand what users are meaning with their queries and refining the search to provide more relevant results.

PaulHoule 15y ago

It was the first one that didn't suck and it was the first one that made money. Infoseek was the first search engine I saw. They were thinking of charging people for subscriptions. Altavista came out with a bigger and fresher index, for a year or two they were the best, but they were being totally rolled by spammers, just like the others. Then there was Google, which was spam resistant and much more relevant than the competition. Then Google figured out how to make money and nobody's caught up since. Arguably Bing "doesn't suck" but it doesn't make money.

boredguy8 15y ago
"It was the first one that didn't suck" That's also untrue. I remember being viscerally mad at Yahoo for moving away from Inktomi because Inktomi results were much better for what I searched for...or I had gotten my searches to work for Inktomi. Who cares? Eventually, Google got better, and I started using them. I use a lot of Google services, but when I search the web I use Google because it works. Searches have very little traction. The only thing it takes to move my searches elsewhere is consistently better results. All it takes for me to try a new search engine is Google not working well a few more times a month.
- InclinedPlane 15y ago
  Lycos was ok in the super early days but as the amount of content increased a simple search engine was no longer effective. Inktomi was great because it didn't have portal-bloat and it had pretty high quality results. But when google came around it blew everyone out of the water because not only were the results generally of higher quality but it was enormously faster. Combined with a smart datacenter strategy and a smart advertising strategy they dominated the market with ease. Edit: To follow up, google was able to deliver better results (due to pagerank) faster (due to map/reduce and sharding) cheaper (due to highly automated data centers filled with commodity hardware). This combination set them up for dominance, the ability to generate better, more context appropriate ads (due to pagerank, map/reduce, etc, etc. and an effectively massive excess of processing power per search) and the ability to be profitable at a much lower CPM for ads (due to cheaper operations) was what allowed them to become a multi-billion dollar company and leave all other search companies in the dust.
- bad_user 15y ago
  Before using Google, I have been using both Altavista and Yahoo for searches. The results from those older search engines really sucked for me. I remember sitting at a local Internet Cafe, frustrated that I wasn't finding what I searched for. The I saw somebody using Google and thought I should give it a try. The difference that I experienced with Google was humongous, and it made an instant convert out of me, even though in general I'm pretty conservative about throwing away tools that work. Really, it wasn't even funny how better Google was. This was happening in 2001.
zobzu 15y ago
To be honest Google results start to have a lot of spam in them. Even the US results. In the past, US results were rather clear, and localized ones for most other countries were .. well.. not very good. Bing doesn't really do better, but that's the state of the engines right now anyway. If you look for something specific, Google dumbs it out too. In the early days it didn't do that and you could search for good stuff. Now you get what everyone gets, whatever you're typing.
- fhars 15y ago
  Sometimes it helps to put a plus in front of every search term, that does at least prevent google from replacing the most specific term of your query with the least specific misspelling. That is especially helpful for programming terms that are minor variations of human language terms, just compare the searches scala hlist and +scala +hlist Thw first doesn't contain a single result that is relevant to the query.
  - ac-slater 15y ago
    In my experience the results of those two queries are almost identical: http://imgur.com/a/qGVAn#3ilhM http://imgur.com/a/qGVAn#3ilhM
5hoom 15y ago
Exactly. In the 90's I remember using Lycos, Altavista, HotBot, AskJeeves and others which have faded from my memory. Then along came this new 'google' search engine & I never went back to the others. I still have a note scribbled on an old address book (the dead tree kind) saying "www.google.com - it's a new search engine". It was certainly not 'the first'. Just the first really good one.
- colechristensen 15y ago
  Highway 61 was the greatest! It combined results from several of the popular engines and provided the best results until google came along. http://web.archive.org/web/19980205031323/http://www.highway61.com/ http://web.archive.org/web/19980205031323/http://www.highway... /nostalgia
  - alex_c 15y ago
    Same with Ixquick. Looks like it's still around, and going for the "privacy" angle, like DDG. http://ixquick.com/ http://ixquick.com/
ohyes 15y ago
My favorite was Dogpile. edit: it still exists. I still like dogpile.
ori_b 15y ago
> It was the first one that didn't suck and it was the first one that made money. That's a bit of a tautology. "It dominates because it was the first to produce a dominant product."

kevingadd 15y ago

When people testify before congress like this, is it under oath? Lying to congress should be considered perjury.

staunch 15y ago
It is under oath. This is not the kind of thing that should be prosecuted. Jeez.
- wpietri 15y ago
  Why not? A paid mouthpiece saying something false in order to mislead Congress into doing what his paymasters want seems like a serious issue to me.
  - dissident 15y ago
    He might be saying something false, but he's saying something he believes is true. They're not asking him for an account on some event that took place, they're asking for an opinion. Lying under oath has to be a clear and deliberate misrepresentation of the truth. That can't be proven in this case. It's a perfectly valid opinion to believe that Google is successful because it was first, whether you agree with that opinion or not.
    - TillE 15y ago
      > It's a perfectly valid opinion No it isn't. It's factually false.
    - brown9-2 15y ago
      Is believing that the sun revolves around the earth a valid opinion?
      - Natsu 15y ago
        It is if you accept relativity's statement that there is no privileged reference frame. That said, you'd have to be clueless to think that there were no search engines before Google. Haven't they at least heard of Yahoo?

staunch 15y ago

By "got there first" he could quite likely mean that they were the first to achieve search market domination, which is entirely true.

felipemnoa 15y ago
Is there any indication that that is what he meant?
- ohashi 15y ago
  It seems like a pretty ridiculous definition considering the words chosen. Getting there first implies doing something first. Google didn't invent search nor did it invent the business model of PPC (GoTo/Overture did it - who were bought by YAHOO).
anamax 15y ago
> he could quite likely mean that [google was] the first to achieve search market domination, which is entirely true. What definition of "search market domination" are we using such that that is true? I'm pretty sure that Altavista had a huge market share at its peak and I suspect that it wasn't the first one to have a comparable share.

jinushaun 15y ago

First?! Geez louise, I still remember the day when I first heard about Google while talking to a computer nerd friend of mine over AIM. We were probably discussing an article on Slashdot. I still remember the days when I was constantly evangelising the awesomeness of Google and secretly changing the default home page for everyone else in my family. Good riddance Yahoo, Infoseek, Lycos and Altavista. Good riddance sneaky sponsored search results.

mbesto 15y ago

> Being first to market does grant a significant advantage. This was the first comment I saw on the article and I immediately began to cringe. This is so dead WRONG! For the life of me I can't find the reference but I believe their is a book that talks solely how being first in a market is a massive myth.

kenjackson 15y ago
It can be a big advantage. In a commodity market, which search has become, it's huge. And the other type of market is one with huge network effects. Beating Facebook will be hard regardless of your feature set.
- taeric 15y ago
  You realize that Facebook was hardly first into this market, right? Same with Google.
  - kenjackson 15y ago
    Facebook was the first I know in this market. Others competed in similar markets, from SixDegrees to BlackVoices, but sufficiently different in that they weren't attempting as broad of an appeal. Google was the first to the "search only" market. Well after AltaVista abandoned it. When Google came on the scene search engines were a feature of portals. They made the market of the search-engine only destination.
    - mbesto 15y ago
      > Facebook was the first I know in this market. And herein lies the fallacy and the confirmation bias that exists about the success of companies. Just because you know it to be first doesn't mean it was the first to market. > Well after AltaVista abandoned it. So you're saying AltaVista was first? (technically it wasn't) scratches head
      - kenjackson 15y ago

felipemnoa 15y ago

Wow, the arguments as to why google is a monopoly are almost surreal. It seems that the main argument is that they have a better/popular product and hence they should be punished for that. Whomever is pulling the strings from behind is really playing dirty. I hope it comes back to bite them in the ass big time. This whole thing looks too much like a witch hunt.

aristus 15y ago
You are offended because Google is being held to a different standard, and you are right. That's the whole point. Monopolies are held to a different standard. This exercise is about determining whether a) Google enjoys a monopoly and b) has abused it to the detriment of competition. The nature of this process is ugly, and everyone involved is self-interested. But I don't think it is a "witch hunt". The question is not whether Google does good work, or that its search engine is popular on its own brand & merit. It does and it is. The question is whether Google is using its dominance in one area (telling people where things are) to gain dominance in other areas (telling people to use its products over others). Even if Google's non-search products are objectively better, it can be a bad thing in the long run as the next generation of competitors are locked out by Google's dominance in search. Defenses like "competition is one click away" are disingenuous, in my opinion. Clicks follow a power-law distribution. But I don't know what the right answer is. This might all be sour grapes. That's what the hearings and investigation are supposed to reveal.
- yoyar 15y ago
  So, Google does a bunch of good work and people choose to use their service. The US is bankrupt and the economy is screwed. And the congress is spending time persecuting a successful company. BTW, Google isn't the only one. See: Gibson guitars. It doesn't surprise me that people don't want to do business in the US anymore.
  - aristus 15y ago
    Congress is spending time investigating whether this company has become so successful that it is a defacto a monopoly and has abused its position. These two questions are not settled. Gibson was investigated along with other companies for price-fixing. That's more collusion / cartel stuff, but it also falls under anti-trust. The word "trust" is not an accident. When you do good work and capture the lion's share of a market, you are then subject to a much higher standard than otherwise. Even little things you do can kill whole markets. It's not pretty, and I haven't made up my own mind. But so far this investigation does not appear to be frivolous or arbitrary.

itswindy 15y ago

That's besides the point, even if the writer is 112% correct. What you do with the power you have now, no matter how you got it matters. But advertising based search engines are biased, they will want you to click on ads and will favor their partners (brands.) Larry and Sergey were right, it's a shame they fell for a few $billion more: "Currently, the predominant business model for commercial search engines is advertising. The goals of the advertising business model do not always correspond to providing quality search to users." "But less blatant bias are likely to be tolerated by the market. For example, a search engine could add a small factor to search results from "friendly" companies, and subtract a factor from results from competitors. This type of bias is very difficult to detect but could still have a significant effect on the market. Furthermore, advertising income often provides an incentive to provide poor quality search results."

itswindy 15y ago
For those that didn't notice, this is from Larry and Sergey's original PageRank paper http://infolab.stanford.edu/~backrub/google.html http://infolab.stanford.edu/~backrub/google.html , before Eric Schmidt showed up as the "adult." Google is now the largest advertiser on earth. I agree 100% with them here!

j_col 15y ago

Using their search home page recently to promote their new social network, for example? Pretty hard to compete with that kind of marketing coverage if you were trying to launch your own social network...