5 ms·

Internet search? They have almost 92% market share.

dodobirdlord 4y ago
Market share does not a monopoly make. Do you really consider Bing to be so bad that you don't even count it as a competing product in the same product category as Google Search? The cost to switch is literally nothing.
- sli 4y ago
  You aren't wrong in theory, but in practice it's silly to pretend like the average person knows anything but Google. There comes a point where inertia and market share need to be considered and for some products (like Google, but especially Android) it really feels like we're beyond that. Antitrust and monopoly laws are almost always going to lag behind the needs of reality.
- Clubber 4y ago
  Laws don't require a literal monopoly, but significant market powers so yes, market share does a monopoly make via the power of that share in most circumstances. Of course being a monopoly in the legal sense isn't in and of itself illegal, it's leveraging that power to self serving, uncompetitive purposes. https://www.ftc.gov/advice-guidance/competition-guidance/guide-antitrust-laws/single-firm-conduct/monopolization-defined https://www.ftc.gov/advice-guidance/competition-guidance/gui... Courts do not require a literal monopoly before applying rules for single firm conduct; that term is used as shorthand for a firm with significant and durable market power — that is, the long term ability to raise price or exclude competitors. That is how that term is used here: a "monopolist" is a firm with significant and durable market power. Courts look at the firm's market share, but typically do not find monopoly power if the firm (or a group of firms acting in concert) has less than 50 percent of the sales of a particular product or service within a certain geographic area. Some courts have required much higher percentages. In addition, that leading position must be sustainable over time: if competitive forces or the entry of new firms could discipline the conduct of the leading firm, courts are unlikely to find that the firm has lasting market power.
  - dodobirdlord 4y ago
    The claim that Google has significant and durable market power in the search engine market doesn't hold up even by the FTC definition you quote here. There's plenty of competition, and the switching cost for consumers is literally nothing. They clearly aren't able (or aren't trying) to exclude competitors, since all of their competitors I can think of are still in business (Bing, Baidu, Yahoo, Yandex, DuckDuckGo, Brave, probably more...), and they clearly don't have the ability to raise prices (can you imagine how instantly Google Search would be consigned to irrelevance if they tried to charge users for searches?). This isn't a market that's in the grips of a monopolist limiting competition, this is an extremely competitive market, so competitive that the cost to the end-user has been driven down to literally nothing. It's not quite the most competitive market that exists, since the market for credit cards is so competitive that credit card providers actually pay users to use their credit cards, but it's close, and Brave has been testing those waters in the search engine market recently.
    - systemvoltage 4y ago
      I disagree. There is literally no competition. It left the competition sometime in 2002 in the dust. Monumental achievement by Google and one of the most iconic companies ever to have existed on planet earth. But quoting regional competitors like Baidu and Yandex!? Come on, that’s just silly.
      - dodobirdlord 4y ago
        Being better than the competition isn't the same as having no competition, and it's especially not the same as engaging in anti-competitive practices to prevent competition from existing. The purpose of consumer protection and antitrust laws is to ensure that market leaders hold their position by virtue of having the superior product and not by some other nefarious means. I don't think most people would dispute that Google Search is better than Bing. But is it really so much better that Bing doesn't even count as being in the same market?
    - Clubber 4y ago
      >and they clearly don't have the ability to raise prices (can you imagine how instantly Google Search would be consigned to irrelevance if they tried to charge users for searches? The prices they raise would be on advertising. They do have significant competition with Facebook and the like in the internet advertising industry. >the cost to the end-user has been driven down to literally nothing The end user is the product not the customer. The customer is advertisers. So I think you are missing what market power means. Since Google earns most of the profits with search, it allows them to use those funds do things like: 1. Acquire YouTube 2. Run YouTube for two years without any supporting ad revenue 3. Making it impossible for anyone else to compete with YouTube in the first two years because they don't have that kinda bank. 4. Allow users 1G of storage on Gmail and offering it for free, blowing away (killing) any competitor. 5. Buy and releasing Android OS for free to hardware vendors and including Google services on those OSs, instantly taking the majority market share on the brand new mobile industry. 6. Build AWS. There are many more, but all those investments were built on the revenue from Google search.
- Supermancho 4y ago
  > Market share does not a monopoly make That's a common refrain from the people holding the monopoly. It's simply untrue. If you are the market leader by a wide margin, you end up dictating the landscape. > Do you really consider Bing to be so bad that you don't even count it as a competing product in the same product category as Google Search? I can create a car in my garage, but I'm not competing with Honda. What's the point here? That because something exists it is a market force that influences others? Search (and the associated advertising, data collection, etc) exists as a momentum driven product^ via the network effect. How easy it is to switch to Bing or buy the car I made, is wholly irrelevant. ^That wasn't always true, as in the beginning of search circa the 90s, but it's true enough today.
  - roenxi 4y ago
    > That's a common refrain from the people holding the monopoly. It's simply untrue. If you are the market leader by a wide margin, you end up dictating the landscape. So you've missed the actual argument here - how is Google doing that? What are the downsides? Because speaking as someone who switched to DDG out of concern both at Google's social policies and the sheer amount of data they collect, I have been unable to detect any impediments. I do believe nonetheless that Google has a slightly better search index - the results when I check there seem a little more reliable (slightly more varied results, maybe. Hard to put a finger on the difference). They make a really good search engine and fight hard for that 90% market share. But if we decide the word "monopoly" means "makes a good enough product to command 90% of the market" I don't see what the intellectual argument against monopolies is going to be. Sounds like something we want to encourage. When IE was a monopoly way back at the dawn of the internet, the main complaint was it really sucked as a product but people couldn't switch away even if they wanted to because banks and stuff (tax office in my case I think :S) required Windows/IE-only features. That is what I'm against.
    - Rastonbury 4y ago
      Economically a monopoly harms customers with the ability to dictate prices via market power, think OPEC controlling oil supply. In an ideal world, there would be multiple companies offering search ads who compete to give advertisers the best RoI. There would be multiple realistic options at good prices for companies who need office productivity software, Microsoft still has nearly 90%. If I wanted to sell in-app purchases, there would be multiple payment processors I should be able to use and I can chose who takes the smallest cut which would be way less than Play Store and App store
- ffhhj 4y ago
  Right, they are not a monopoly, they *have* monopolostic practices: have been caught giving advantage to their own ads on top of others, are scraping information from websites so people stay on search pages instead of opening links.
  - dodobirdlord 4y ago
    Those don't seem like examples anti-competitive practices in the search engine market. In fact they don't seem like anti-competitive practices at all. This first supposes that there's a meaningful "market" of "ads on Google", which is an unreasonably narrow scope of products to try to define as a market, and the second seems like a straightforward function of a search engine. If Google Search did something like refuse to return results if you searched for "Bing" or "Yandex", that would be an example of an anti-competitive practice in the search engine market, but when I test those searches the first results are the Bing and Yandex homepages.
- Rastonbury 4y ago
  What BS, the presence of a competitor doesn't mean a firm doesn't wield monopoly power. The monopoly is in Search ads, ask any big advertiser to switch to their budgets to Bing and see what they say
  - dodobirdlord 4y ago
    The initial comment claimed internet search as the monopoly, and that's what I responded to. Also, try to be civil to avoid degrading the level of discussion. If you want to talk about search ads, sure, maybe Google Search has a monopoly on search ads. If they do it doesn't seem like they wield that monopoly power to dictate prices, given that search ad slots are mainly auctioned to the highest bidder. And even if they do, so what? Businesses are not consumers, and claims that Google scalping advertisers negatively impacts consumers rely on indirect circuitous reasoning.
- car_analogy 4y ago
  > Market share does not a monopoly make. Say that again after Google delists your business and promotes that of a competitor instead.

Market share does not a monopoly make. Do you really consider Bing to be so bad that you don't even count it as a competing product in the same product category as Google Search? The cost to switch is literally nothing.

sli 4y ago
You aren't wrong in theory, but in practice it's silly to pretend like the average person knows anything but Google. There comes a point where inertia and market share need to be considered and for some products (like Google, but especially Android) it really feels like we're beyond that. Antitrust and monopoly laws are almost always going to lag behind the needs of reality.
Clubber 4y ago
Laws don't require a literal monopoly, but significant market powers so yes, market share does a monopoly make via the power of that share in most circumstances. Of course being a monopoly in the legal sense isn't in and of itself illegal, it's leveraging that power to self serving, uncompetitive purposes. https://www.ftc.gov/advice-guidance/competition-guidance/guide-antitrust-laws/single-firm-conduct/monopolization-defined https://www.ftc.gov/advice-guidance/competition-guidance/gui... Courts do not require a literal monopoly before applying rules for single firm conduct; that term is used as shorthand for a firm with significant and durable market power — that is, the long term ability to raise price or exclude competitors. That is how that term is used here: a "monopolist" is a firm with significant and durable market power. Courts look at the firm's market share, but typically do not find monopoly power if the firm (or a group of firms acting in concert) has less than 50 percent of the sales of a particular product or service within a certain geographic area. Some courts have required much higher percentages. In addition, that leading position must be sustainable over time: if competitive forces or the entry of new firms could discipline the conduct of the leading firm, courts are unlikely to find that the firm has lasting market power.
- dodobirdlord 4y ago
  The claim that Google has significant and durable market power in the search engine market doesn't hold up even by the FTC definition you quote here. There's plenty of competition, and the switching cost for consumers is literally nothing. They clearly aren't able (or aren't trying) to exclude competitors, since all of their competitors I can think of are still in business (Bing, Baidu, Yahoo, Yandex, DuckDuckGo, Brave, probably more...), and they clearly don't have the ability to raise prices (can you imagine how instantly Google Search would be consigned to irrelevance if they tried to charge users for searches?). This isn't a market that's in the grips of a monopolist limiting competition, this is an extremely competitive market, so competitive that the cost to the end-user has been driven down to literally nothing. It's not quite the most competitive market that exists, since the market for credit cards is so competitive that credit card providers actually pay users to use their credit cards, but it's close, and Brave has been testing those waters in the search engine market recently.
  - systemvoltage 4y ago
    I disagree. There is literally no competition. It left the competition sometime in 2002 in the dust. Monumental achievement by Google and one of the most iconic companies ever to have existed on planet earth. But quoting regional competitors like Baidu and Yandex!? Come on, that’s just silly.
    - dodobirdlord 4y ago
      Being better than the competition isn't the same as having no competition, and it's especially not the same as engaging in anti-competitive practices to prevent competition from existing. The purpose of consumer protection and antitrust laws is to ensure that market leaders hold their position by virtue of having the superior product and not by some other nefarious means. I don't think most people would dispute that Google Search is better than Bing. But is it really so much better that Bing doesn't even count as being in the same market?
  - Clubber 4y ago
    >and they clearly don't have the ability to raise prices (can you imagine how instantly Google Search would be consigned to irrelevance if they tried to charge users for searches? The prices they raise would be on advertising. They do have significant competition with Facebook and the like in the internet advertising industry. >the cost to the end-user has been driven down to literally nothing The end user is the product not the customer. The customer is advertisers. So I think you are missing what market power means. Since Google earns most of the profits with search, it allows them to use those funds do things like: 1. Acquire YouTube 2. Run YouTube for two years without any supporting ad revenue 3. Making it impossible for anyone else to compete with YouTube in the first two years because they don't have that kinda bank. 4. Allow users 1G of storage on Gmail and offering it for free, blowing away (killing) any competitor. 5. Buy and releasing Android OS for free to hardware vendors and including Google services on those OSs, instantly taking the majority market share on the brand new mobile industry. 6. Build AWS. There are many more, but all those investments were built on the revenue from Google search.
Supermancho 4y ago
> Market share does not a monopoly make That's a common refrain from the people holding the monopoly. It's simply untrue. If you are the market leader by a wide margin, you end up dictating the landscape. > Do you really consider Bing to be so bad that you don't even count it as a competing product in the same product category as Google Search? I can create a car in my garage, but I'm not competing with Honda. What's the point here? That because something exists it is a market force that influences others? Search (and the associated advertising, data collection, etc) exists as a momentum driven product^ via the network effect. How easy it is to switch to Bing or buy the car I made, is wholly irrelevant. ^That wasn't always true, as in the beginning of search circa the 90s, but it's true enough today.
- roenxi 4y ago
  > That's a common refrain from the people holding the monopoly. It's simply untrue. If you are the market leader by a wide margin, you end up dictating the landscape. So you've missed the actual argument here - how is Google doing that? What are the downsides? Because speaking as someone who switched to DDG out of concern both at Google's social policies and the sheer amount of data they collect, I have been unable to detect any impediments. I do believe nonetheless that Google has a slightly better search index - the results when I check there seem a little more reliable (slightly more varied results, maybe. Hard to put a finger on the difference). They make a really good search engine and fight hard for that 90% market share. But if we decide the word "monopoly" means "makes a good enough product to command 90% of the market" I don't see what the intellectual argument against monopolies is going to be. Sounds like something we want to encourage. When IE was a monopoly way back at the dawn of the internet, the main complaint was it really sucked as a product but people couldn't switch away even if they wanted to because banks and stuff (tax office in my case I think :S) required Windows/IE-only features. That is what I'm against.
  - Rastonbury 4y ago
    Economically a monopoly harms customers with the ability to dictate prices via market power, think OPEC controlling oil supply. In an ideal world, there would be multiple companies offering search ads who compete to give advertisers the best RoI. There would be multiple realistic options at good prices for companies who need office productivity software, Microsoft still has nearly 90%. If I wanted to sell in-app purchases, there would be multiple payment processors I should be able to use and I can chose who takes the smallest cut which would be way less than Play Store and App store
ffhhj 4y ago
Right, they are not a monopoly, they *have* monopolostic practices: have been caught giving advantage to their own ads on top of others, are scraping information from websites so people stay on search pages instead of opening links.
- dodobirdlord 4y ago
  Those don't seem like examples anti-competitive practices in the search engine market. In fact they don't seem like anti-competitive practices at all. This first supposes that there's a meaningful "market" of "ads on Google", which is an unreasonably narrow scope of products to try to define as a market, and the second seems like a straightforward function of a search engine. If Google Search did something like refuse to return results if you searched for "Bing" or "Yandex", that would be an example of an anti-competitive practice in the search engine market, but when I test those searches the first results are the Bing and Yandex homepages.
Rastonbury 4y ago
What BS, the presence of a competitor doesn't mean a firm doesn't wield monopoly power. The monopoly is in Search ads, ask any big advertiser to switch to their budgets to Bing and see what they say
- dodobirdlord 4y ago
  The initial comment claimed internet search as the monopoly, and that's what I responded to. Also, try to be civil to avoid degrading the level of discussion. If you want to talk about search ads, sure, maybe Google Search has a monopoly on search ads. If they do it doesn't seem like they wield that monopoly power to dictate prices, given that search ad slots are mainly auctioned to the highest bidder. And even if they do, so what? Businesses are not consumers, and claims that Google scalping advertisers negatively impacts consumers rely on indirect circuitous reasoning.
car_analogy 4y ago
> Market share does not a monopoly make. Say that again after Google delists your business and promotes that of a competitor instead.