5 ms·

What's really puzzling is that Google Analytics never got banned because of antitrust laws. It's the most obvious example of predatory pricing I've ever seen. H

What's really puzzling is that Google Analytics never got banned because of antitrust laws. It's the most obvious example of predatory pricing I've ever seen. How is a smaller company supposed to compete against a free product?

tantalor 4y ago
Lots of ways? Better features, better support, better performance. If you can't beat the free offering, then go home.
- reaperducer 4y ago
  If you can't beat the free offering, then go home. In the real world of physical goods, there are laws against this. But Google's a tech company, so anything goes.
  - foota 4y ago
    It's not illegal to give things away for free unless it's dumping.
    - reaperducer 4y ago
      It's not illegal to give things away for free unless it's dumping. Which is exactly my point. "[Dumping] occurs when manufacturers export a product... at a price below the normal price with an injuring effect. The objective of dumping is to increase market share in... by driving out competition and thereby create a monopoly situation" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dumping_(pricing_policy) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dumping_(pricing_policy) That's exactly what's happening here. Google prices Analytics at $0 to prevent any competition from starting up. While an argument can be made that Google doesn't need to charge money for the product because that cost is made up in other areas, there is no way of knowing that, because those costs are not public. We don't know if it's fully made up by other means, or partially made up by other means, or not at all. Like you, IANAL, but it's my understanding that legally, it's not about the price, it's about the intent.
      - wvenable 4y ago
        > Google prices Analytics at $0 to prevent any competition from starting up. It's not dumping because, in the absence of any competition, the price hasn't changed. It just turns out the market price for this service is $0.
        quickthrower2 4y ago
        I would say it has more in common with the Microsoft antitrust case. In that they gave IE away for free. I think you can show Google has monopoly on search and search data and GA is the only analytics allowed to connect with that. Is it dumping? Yes. They don’t intend to raise the price, but they get paid not in cash but in terms of increasing their monopoly by having so much data on us. Now a lot of things are like this (anything where you give your email for a discount code). But they are not intended to get a global monopoly or make it impossible for anyone else to do business competing with you.
        wvenable 4y ago
        IE is no more but the price for browsers is still free. Most consumers even at the time also did not pay for their browser. Now these days it would be ridiculous if your device or operating system didn't come with a browser. > They get paid not in cash but in terms of increasing their monopoly by having so much data on us Yes, and anyone else can do the same.
        quickthrower2 4y ago
        The landscape has changed (or to pun... the netscape?). We now have genuine browser competition. I think Safari and Firefox are just enough to say Chrome is not a monopoly. I write this on FF right now (running on Ubuntu) because it is a viable alternative. This is the case for now, might be different in 2023. "X is free" is not enough to be a problem on it's own.
        xboxnolifes 4y ago
        > It just turns out the market price for this service is $0 You can't come to this conclusion until you prevent Google from using the acquired data to improve their ad service.
  - jokethrowaway 4y ago
    What a horrible law. The market should just create a better solution or find investors to call the bluff of the offending company and make even more money
  - minsc_and_boo 4y ago
    Which real world country? In the U.S. most antitrust law is based on protecting what's best for the consumer, not protecting the competition from a free alternative.
- bryan_w 4y ago
  "We've tried nothing and we're all out of ideas!" - A French Ned Flanders, probably
vkou 4y ago
One broad view is that anti-trust is supposed to protect consumers, not competitors. If a competitor can't produce a quality product that people will pay for, consumers aren't being harmed by the prevalence of a free good-enough product. In a consumer-protection world where a free and open source Linux had 98% market share in the OS market, Microsoft or Apple would have no leg to stand on to sue its developers over anti-trust. In a competitor-protection world, they would. The US views anti-trust through a very consumer-focused lens[1], the EU sometimes views it through a more competitor-focused one. [1] This doesn't mean I agree with it, and there are obvious problems with trying to prove harm in a court of law, if no alternative exists.
raviparikh 4y ago
I co-founded a company called Heap that competed against Google Analytics and we were quite successful. Amplitude, Mixpanel, and others have also done so. GA’s free pricing was not really a big issue for us and customers were very willing to pay 6- and 7-figures for a differentiated quality product.
- Nagyman 4y ago
  Loved Heap (Analytics?). I advocated for it while working at my previous employer :) I think we were early customers. At the time, its automatic tracking of all events was a godsend compared to hooking up specific tracking after the fact using GA events.
Wowfunhappy 4y ago
Doesn’t predatory pricing mean “we dropped our pricing below profitability in order to kill competitors (and presumably raise our own prices once they’re dead)”? I think you’d have a very good case against Amazon, and probably Uber/Lyft, and I’ve long wondered why no one sued them over it. But in Google’s case, Analytics is profitable for the same reason Youtube is profitable—Google makes money off the data they gather.
- permo-w 4y ago
  I did hear this in about 2014, so it could well have changed, but I thought Youtube wasn't profitable, or at the very most barely profitable
  - IX-103 4y ago
    As of 2019, I was still hearing it wasn't profitable. Though that may be starting to change: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/04/youtube-is-now-building-its-own-video-transcoding-chips/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/04/youtube-is-now-build...
scarface74 4y ago
If we enforced a law that said no product can be sold at a loss, we would get rid of almost every single startup and many recently IPOd former unicorns,
adrr 4y ago
How many companies use GA as their only analytics system? It isn’t free. It has a free tier.
- dx034 4y ago
  It's like with Cloudflare. The free Tier is what gets small companies and hobby developers in. And as they know your system but not the one of others, they'll recommend it to use when your company grows or their employer looks for an analytics system. But I don't think it's predatory. It clearly worked for cloudflare and seems to work for Tailscale (they openly said they're using the same strategy). It would be predatory if others couldn't match that, but I'd argue many competitors could offer free plans for small websites if they wanted to.
dudus 4y ago
Google Analytics has an enterprise paid version and it starts at 6 figures, Adobe has a very competitive product in the same space. So there's definitively room for a paid product in the market.

tantalor 4y ago

Lots of ways? Better features, better support, better performance. If you can't beat the free offering, then go home.

reaperducer 4y ago
If you can't beat the free offering, then go home. In the real world of physical goods, there are laws against this. But Google's a tech company, so anything goes.
- foota 4y ago
  It's not illegal to give things away for free unless it's dumping.
  - reaperducer 4y ago
    It's not illegal to give things away for free unless it's dumping. Which is exactly my point. "[Dumping] occurs when manufacturers export a product... at a price below the normal price with an injuring effect. The objective of dumping is to increase market share in... by driving out competition and thereby create a monopoly situation" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dumping_(pricing_policy) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dumping_(pricing_policy) That's exactly what's happening here. Google prices Analytics at $0 to prevent any competition from starting up. While an argument can be made that Google doesn't need to charge money for the product because that cost is made up in other areas, there is no way of knowing that, because those costs are not public. We don't know if it's fully made up by other means, or partially made up by other means, or not at all. Like you, IANAL, but it's my understanding that legally, it's not about the price, it's about the intent.
    - wvenable 4y ago
      > Google prices Analytics at $0 to prevent any competition from starting up. It's not dumping because, in the absence of any competition, the price hasn't changed. It just turns out the market price for this service is $0.
      - quickthrower2 4y ago
        I would say it has more in common with the Microsoft antitrust case. In that they gave IE away for free. I think you can show Google has monopoly on search and search data and GA is the only analytics allowed to connect with that. Is it dumping? Yes. They don’t intend to raise the price, but they get paid not in cash but in terms of increasing their monopoly by having so much data on us. Now a lot of things are like this (anything where you give your email for a discount code). But they are not intended to get a global monopoly or make it impossible for anyone else to do business competing with you.
        wvenable 4y ago
        IE is no more but the price for browsers is still free. Most consumers even at the time also did not pay for their browser. Now these days it would be ridiculous if your device or operating system didn't come with a browser. > They get paid not in cash but in terms of increasing their monopoly by having so much data on us Yes, and anyone else can do the same.
        quickthrower2 4y ago
        The landscape has changed (or to pun... the netscape?). We now have genuine browser competition. I think Safari and Firefox are just enough to say Chrome is not a monopoly. I write this on FF right now (running on Ubuntu) because it is a viable alternative. This is the case for now, might be different in 2023. "X is free" is not enough to be a problem on it's own.
      - xboxnolifes 4y ago
        > It just turns out the market price for this service is $0 You can't come to this conclusion until you prevent Google from using the acquired data to improve their ad service.
- jokethrowaway 4y ago
  What a horrible law. The market should just create a better solution or find investors to call the bluff of the offending company and make even more money
- minsc_and_boo 4y ago
  Which real world country? In the U.S. most antitrust law is based on protecting what's best for the consumer, not protecting the competition from a free alternative.
bryan_w 4y ago
"We've tried nothing and we're all out of ideas!" - A French Ned Flanders, probably

vkou 4y ago

One broad view is that anti-trust is supposed to protect consumers, not competitors. If a competitor can't produce a quality product that people will pay for, consumers aren't being harmed by the prevalence of a free good-enough product. In a consumer-protection world where a free and open source Linux had 98% market share in the OS market, Microsoft or Apple would have no leg to stand on to sue its developers over anti-trust. In a competitor-protection world, they would. The US views anti-trust through a very consumer-focused lens[1], the EU sometimes views it through a more competitor-focused one. [1] This doesn't mean I agree with it, and there are obvious problems with trying to prove harm in a court of law, if no alternative exists.

raviparikh 4y ago

I co-founded a company called Heap that competed against Google Analytics and we were quite successful. Amplitude, Mixpanel, and others have also done so. GA’s free pricing was not really a big issue for us and customers were very willing to pay 6- and 7-figures for a differentiated quality product.

Nagyman 4y ago
Loved Heap (Analytics?). I advocated for it while working at my previous employer :) I think we were early customers. At the time, its automatic tracking of all events was a godsend compared to hooking up specific tracking after the fact using GA events.

Wowfunhappy 4y ago

Doesn’t predatory pricing mean “we dropped our pricing below profitability in order to kill competitors (and presumably raise our own prices once they’re dead)”? I think you’d have a very good case against Amazon, and probably Uber/Lyft, and I’ve long wondered why no one sued them over it. But in Google’s case, Analytics is profitable for the same reason Youtube is profitable—Google makes money off the data they gather.

permo-w 4y ago
I did hear this in about 2014, so it could well have changed, but I thought Youtube wasn't profitable, or at the very most barely profitable
- IX-103 4y ago
  As of 2019, I was still hearing it wasn't profitable. Though that may be starting to change: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/04/youtube-is-now-building-its-own-video-transcoding-chips/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/04/youtube-is-now-build...

scarface74 4y ago

If we enforced a law that said no product can be sold at a loss, we would get rid of almost every single startup and many recently IPOd former unicorns,

adrr 4y ago

How many companies use GA as their only analytics system? It isn’t free. It has a free tier.

dx034 4y ago
It's like with Cloudflare. The free Tier is what gets small companies and hobby developers in. And as they know your system but not the one of others, they'll recommend it to use when your company grows or their employer looks for an analytics system. But I don't think it's predatory. It clearly worked for cloudflare and seems to work for Tailscale (they openly said they're using the same strategy). It would be predatory if others couldn't match that, but I'd argue many competitors could offer free plans for small websites if they wanted to.

dudus 4y ago

Google Analytics has an enterprise paid version and it starts at 6 figures, Adobe has a very competitive product in the same space. So there's definitively room for a paid product in the market.