6 ms·
I just don’t see what the plan is here. I actually don’t think Google has such an iron grip monopoly that it unbreakable. In fact, I see Google as the most vuln
by etempleton 3y ago
I just don’t see what the plan is here. I actually don’t think Google has such an iron grip monopoly that it unbreakable. In fact, I see Google as the most vulnerable of the big tech companies. They have one highly profitable product, search. Bing is making serious strides and their AI search is significantly better. Everything else Google does is small potatoes.
- josephd79 3y agoIs Google Ads and Youtube not profitable?
- gorbypark 3y agoTechnically, Google Ads is making all the money. Google search and YouTube are more or less just funnels for Google Ads. I'm not sure how Alphabet has everything setup and if Google Ads revenue that originates from search is booked to the search division, but in reality, everything is just ways for you to look at Google Ads.
- bryanlarsen 3y agoI don't buy this argument. Google Search and YouTube are highly separable. There is some synergy between the two, but really no more than between any two ad-driven sites on the Internet.
- gorbypark 3y agoYeah, of course. At the scale of Google's main products, they could build unique ads platforms and keep everything completely seperate if they wanted to, needed to or were forced to.
- Guvante 3y agoAlphabet would like get separated into independent companies. They might already be tracking their profitability that way to encourage search to include more ads "organically" (as in by tying search performance to ads in search revenue that team will be interested in improving ads in search revenue) This doesn't even mean Google Search doesn't use Google Ads. It just means that Google Search has to buy usage of Google Ads thereby allowing competition between ad providers.
- fidotron 3y agoI think there is a valid meta question which is what would happen if Google Search stopped bringing in revenue tomorrow? For example, would they attempt to exploit Android etc. even more? On some level there is a case that their core vulnerability represents a major risk to them suddenly going full evil with everything in their strategic moat.
- mrweasel 3y agoIf they had gone after Google 10 years ago, then sure, but I think you're right. The only place where I can really see a monopoly is in online advertising, it's not complete but pretty close. Google is still the number one search engine, by a pretty large margin, but they are looking increasingly vulnerable and even smaller search engines with their own crawlers are starting to appear.
- Thaxll 3y agoYoutube making $30B a year is small potatoes? Google Cloud $28B.
- etempleton 3y agoRelative to Search’s ~200 billion? Yes.
- afavour 3y ago> Bing is making serious strides August 2022: 3.34% August 2023: 3.03% Meanwhile Google has 92%: https://gs.statcounter.com/search-engine-market-share https://gs.statcounter.com/search-engine-market-share > their AI search is significantly better Whether the product is the best in class or not doesn't have any relevance when it comes to judging a monopoly. At least I really hope we don't end up in a situation where courts start ruling based on speculation on the future of AI because good lord would that be a mess. I actually wish the media would stop calling these "monopoly" trials, even though I understand why they do it. They're antitrust trials. Google does not need to have an overarching monopoly in order to be tried for antitrust violations.
- ethbr1 3y agoOn the other hand, MS is pushing Bing hard via Edge/Windows. Google should know from Chrome's start that a lot of market share is user laziness, if you show up with a functionally equivalent product. Eventually someone clicks "Try X!" MS' privileging of ChatGPT in Bing-on-Edge is a pretty genius shot.
- afavour 3y agoSure but we're just discussing hypotheticals here. Courts shouldn't be ruling based on whether 2024 might finally be the Year of Bing.