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I still don't see why anti-trust matters here. Say I make a search engine better than Google. If I market it, I get some share of Google's users. The better my

I still don't see why anti-trust matters here. Say I make a search engine better than Google. If I market it, I get some share of Google's users. The better my search engine is, the more of user base I “steal”. What's wrong with that? Is there something Google can (legally) do to stop me?

jcparkyn 4y ago
They can pay you lots of money to buy it off you, and then do what they want with it. Great for you, but (potentially) bad for all the prospective users. It also might be bad for all the users who would have kept using Google either way, since less competition allows Google to make a worse product (e.g., more ads).
- scarface74 4y ago
  Why would a VC invest in a company if it knew its main avenue of getting a return was being cut off?
  - jdub 4y ago
    The return.
  - jcparkyn 4y ago
    I'm not sure I follow. How does that relate to my comment?
    - scarface74 4y ago
      The hypothetical search engine isn’t going to exist without investors who are expecting a return.
- notpushkin 4y ago
  > They can pay you lots of money to buy it off you Only if you have investors that can force you to sell. I know that “just bootstrap your own search engine lol” is not an answer, but I do think there's some middle ground.
  - TeMPOraL 4y ago
    If you're actually a threat to them and still think so, it just means they haven't offered you enough money. They'll keep doubling the offer until you (or your family) starts to question whether sticking to your product vision is worth forgoing a once-in-a-lifetime option to literally win at life with a single signature.
ben-schaaf 4y ago
Google owns the web browser your users use to access your search engine. Google owns the search engine your users use to find yours. Google owns the ad platform you use to market your search engine. Google owns a large share of the software used to run alternate web browsers. Anti-trust is what stands in the way of google: Preventing your search engine from being used with chrome. Making your website not work with chrome anymore. Delisting your websites from google search. Removing your ads. Blocking your emails. What are you going to do other than close your business when you've been effectively blocked from the internet?
- hooande 4y ago
  Do you expect Google to do any of these things to OpenAI, if ChatGPT becomes the google killer that some people say it could be? It's very difficult for me to imagine any of that. OpenAI isn't one person starting a search engine in their garage. But they acquired the reputation and resources to protect them from the behavior you describe through conventional means. And others can do the same.
  - input_sh 4y ago
    I don't believe ChatGPT-based solution will ever replace Google, but if someone tries and gains enough traction they'll encounter at least one of those issues and be on top of HN for that. Google will find some plausible excuse, something deep in ToS they broke, competitor will not be able to work around it or reach someone within Google to explain to them what exactly need to do to restore that part of service. We'll all suspect Google has done so intentionally and maliciously, but nobody will be able to prove that beyond doubt.
  - ben-schaaf 4y ago
    I expect that when Google faces real competition against their core business they will be assessing the legal risk of every anti-competitive move they make, like every monopoly before them. Be that buying the competition, dumping to kill the competitors business, slapping them with lawsuits or making their competition illegal through lobbying.
  - 4y ago
input_sh 4y ago
> The better my search engine is, the more of user base I “steal”. Very bold assumption on your part. Google's not #1 because it's orders of magnitude better than anything else anyone could come up with. It's #1 because Chrome's #1, while #2 (Safari) and #4 (Firefox) receive millions each year to keep it as default. Your alternative, even if objectively better (whatever that means for a search engine) will never take a significant chunk of Google's market share because you can't outpay Google to get it into people's pockets by default. That's what anti-trust is about.
- notpushkin 4y ago
  > Google's not #1 because it's orders of magnitude better than anything else That was the assumption in the OP article – at least, that it was better than competitors at first. Of course, being the default plays a significant role in it keeping its popularity nowadays, but I still believe it can be worked around (and will be, but it'll take time).
  - input_sh 4y ago
    It's still better than everything else in my opinion. I use DDG by default, but sometimes have to revert back to Google. But those are rare enough that it's not signifanctly better than anything else. Something better will come eventually, but it'll be a very uphill battle. Enthusiasts will use it (myself included), most other people will not. TikTok is the only example I can think of of something succeeding in the past decade that's not from a company that also offers like a million other products. That's the power of having a monopoly. If it gets regulated a bit (example: you get a prompt to choose your default search engine when you first open a browser), Google/Apple/Microsoft/Amazon might lose a dominant position in a category or two, but they have a dominant position in so many other categories that it'll mean nothing to them. The only possible solution is regulating them hard, forcing each of those to dissolve into a dozen smaller companies and preventing them from buying up the competition even further. Then and only then will startups have a shot at snatching up a significant number of categories to really endanger what we now know as the Big Four.
nativeit 4y ago
Tell you what, go open a customer support ticket with Google for assistance with a Google Workspace account. Now, once you have discovered that this very normal and routine process literally does not exist, you might spend a little time researching how in the world this could be the case: even if you’ve spent thousands on that Google Workspace account, your only options are A) community support forums full of unpaid users helping users (Aw, isn’t that altruistic of those kindly users?) or, B) go away and deal with your problems yourself. Anti-competitive practices and wielding a de facto monopoly position are perhaps not the singular or direct cause of this frankly astonishing lack of respect for their users, but it is absolutely tightly correlated with such open distaste for the people purchasing and using their products. Lastly, not for nothing, but Google’s own origin story and wildly successful history are literally the result of anti-trust actions taken against their establishment competitors in the late 1990’s/early 2000’s.
- scarface74 4y ago
  And Google Workspaces is a nothingburger in its market and you choose its major competitor..
  - connor11528 4y ago
    Similar point if you’re on Southwest Airlines support. A true monopoly could close all support functions and people would have to deal with it because there’d be nowhere else to go
- notpushkin 4y ago
  To be honest I don't see how this is relevant here. Anyhow, there's a lot of Google Workspace competitors, switching to one of them shouldn't be a problem (at least for internal communications; sharing a self-hosted OnlyOffice link with somebody expecting a Google Docs document would be mildly weird).
  - connor11528 4y ago
    I think the point if you’re a small customer or vendor big companies don’t have to care about you and can treat their customers like shit. Airlines come to mind. Also, sellers on Amazon can be abused by the giant and have little recourse because Amazon controls so much internet commerce. The point I think is that monopolies can treat their customers like shit and get away with it.
afterburner 4y ago
Google is paying Mozilla $450 million a year to be the default search on Firefox. How well can you compete against that?
- connor11528 4y ago
  Plus $12 billion Google pays Apple every year to be default search on safari. https://www.businessinsider.com/google-apple-search-deal-doj-antitrust-suit-2020-10?op=1 https://www.businessinsider.com/google-apple-search-deal-doj...
jdub 4y ago
Take all the answers to your question. Then consider that they're not just the reasons you'll have trouble competing, they're the reasons you won't bother starting.
progfix 4y ago
If your engine is better then they will buy it and shut you down. Or they will put 100x as much money into marketing as you have. Or they will hit you with law suits. What I am trying to say is in practice big corporations have many ways to get rid of their competion. For them there is no need to be better.
nathias 4y ago
if you become good google can just buy you
return_to_monke 4y ago
Google buys your startup, and then shuts it down.

jcparkyn 4y ago

They can pay you lots of money to buy it off you, and then do what they want with it. Great for you, but (potentially) bad for all the prospective users. It also might be bad for all the users who would have kept using Google either way, since less competition allows Google to make a worse product (e.g., more ads).

scarface74 4y ago
Why would a VC invest in a company if it knew its main avenue of getting a return was being cut off?
- jdub 4y ago
  The return.
- jcparkyn 4y ago
  I'm not sure I follow. How does that relate to my comment?
  - scarface74 4y ago
    The hypothetical search engine isn’t going to exist without investors who are expecting a return.
notpushkin 4y ago
> They can pay you lots of money to buy it off you Only if you have investors that can force you to sell. I know that “just bootstrap your own search engine lol” is not an answer, but I do think there's some middle ground.
- TeMPOraL 4y ago
  If you're actually a threat to them and still think so, it just means they haven't offered you enough money. They'll keep doubling the offer until you (or your family) starts to question whether sticking to your product vision is worth forgoing a once-in-a-lifetime option to literally win at life with a single signature.

ben-schaaf 4y ago

Google owns the web browser your users use to access your search engine. Google owns the search engine your users use to find yours. Google owns the ad platform you use to market your search engine. Google owns a large share of the software used to run alternate web browsers. Anti-trust is what stands in the way of google: Preventing your search engine from being used with chrome. Making your website not work with chrome anymore. Delisting your websites from google search. Removing your ads. Blocking your emails. What are you going to do other than close your business when you've been effectively blocked from the internet?

hooande 4y ago
Do you expect Google to do any of these things to OpenAI, if ChatGPT becomes the google killer that some people say it could be? It's very difficult for me to imagine any of that. OpenAI isn't one person starting a search engine in their garage. But they acquired the reputation and resources to protect them from the behavior you describe through conventional means. And others can do the same.
- input_sh 4y ago
  I don't believe ChatGPT-based solution will ever replace Google, but if someone tries and gains enough traction they'll encounter at least one of those issues and be on top of HN for that. Google will find some plausible excuse, something deep in ToS they broke, competitor will not be able to work around it or reach someone within Google to explain to them what exactly need to do to restore that part of service. We'll all suspect Google has done so intentionally and maliciously, but nobody will be able to prove that beyond doubt.
- ben-schaaf 4y ago
  I expect that when Google faces real competition against their core business they will be assessing the legal risk of every anti-competitive move they make, like every monopoly before them. Be that buying the competition, dumping to kill the competitors business, slapping them with lawsuits or making their competition illegal through lobbying.
- 4y ago

input_sh 4y ago

> The better my search engine is, the more of user base I “steal”. Very bold assumption on your part. Google's not #1 because it's orders of magnitude better than anything else anyone could come up with. It's #1 because Chrome's #1, while #2 (Safari) and #4 (Firefox) receive millions each year to keep it as default. Your alternative, even if objectively better (whatever that means for a search engine) will never take a significant chunk of Google's market share because you can't outpay Google to get it into people's pockets by default. That's what anti-trust is about.

notpushkin 4y ago
> Google's not #1 because it's orders of magnitude better than anything else That was the assumption in the OP article – at least, that it was better than competitors at first. Of course, being the default plays a significant role in it keeping its popularity nowadays, but I still believe it can be worked around (and will be, but it'll take time).
- input_sh 4y ago
  It's still better than everything else in my opinion. I use DDG by default, but sometimes have to revert back to Google. But those are rare enough that it's not signifanctly better than anything else. Something better will come eventually, but it'll be a very uphill battle. Enthusiasts will use it (myself included), most other people will not. TikTok is the only example I can think of of something succeeding in the past decade that's not from a company that also offers like a million other products. That's the power of having a monopoly. If it gets regulated a bit (example: you get a prompt to choose your default search engine when you first open a browser), Google/Apple/Microsoft/Amazon might lose a dominant position in a category or two, but they have a dominant position in so many other categories that it'll mean nothing to them. The only possible solution is regulating them hard, forcing each of those to dissolve into a dozen smaller companies and preventing them from buying up the competition even further. Then and only then will startups have a shot at snatching up a significant number of categories to really endanger what we now know as the Big Four.

nativeit 4y ago

Tell you what, go open a customer support ticket with Google for assistance with a Google Workspace account. Now, once you have discovered that this very normal and routine process literally does not exist, you might spend a little time researching how in the world this could be the case: even if you’ve spent thousands on that Google Workspace account, your only options are A) community support forums full of unpaid users helping users (Aw, isn’t that altruistic of those kindly users?) or, B) go away and deal with your problems yourself. Anti-competitive practices and wielding a de facto monopoly position are perhaps not the singular or direct cause of this frankly astonishing lack of respect for their users, but it is absolutely tightly correlated with such open distaste for the people purchasing and using their products. Lastly, not for nothing, but Google’s own origin story and wildly successful history are literally the result of anti-trust actions taken against their establishment competitors in the late 1990’s/early 2000’s.

scarface74 4y ago
And Google Workspaces is a nothingburger in its market and you choose its major competitor..
- connor11528 4y ago
  Similar point if you’re on Southwest Airlines support. A true monopoly could close all support functions and people would have to deal with it because there’d be nowhere else to go
notpushkin 4y ago
To be honest I don't see how this is relevant here. Anyhow, there's a lot of Google Workspace competitors, switching to one of them shouldn't be a problem (at least for internal communications; sharing a self-hosted OnlyOffice link with somebody expecting a Google Docs document would be mildly weird).
- connor11528 4y ago
  I think the point if you’re a small customer or vendor big companies don’t have to care about you and can treat their customers like shit. Airlines come to mind. Also, sellers on Amazon can be abused by the giant and have little recourse because Amazon controls so much internet commerce. The point I think is that monopolies can treat their customers like shit and get away with it.

afterburner 4y ago

Google is paying Mozilla $450 million a year to be the default search on Firefox. How well can you compete against that?

connor11528 4y ago
Plus $12 billion Google pays Apple every year to be default search on safari. https://www.businessinsider.com/google-apple-search-deal-doj-antitrust-suit-2020-10?op=1 https://www.businessinsider.com/google-apple-search-deal-doj...

jdub 4y ago

Take all the answers to your question. Then consider that they're not just the reasons you'll have trouble competing, they're the reasons you won't bother starting.

progfix 4y ago

If your engine is better then they will buy it and shut you down. Or they will put 100x as much money into marketing as you have. Or they will hit you with law suits. What I am trying to say is in practice big corporations have many ways to get rid of their competion. For them there is no need to be better.

nathias 4y ago

if you become good google can just buy you

return_to_monke 4y ago

Google buys your startup, and then shuts it down.