5 ms·

What is Google's biggest moat these days?

by mg 3y ago

automatic6131 3y ago
Every new startup sends their capital to Google to buy ads for their business. You make a new product, want to sell, where do you go? Marketing. Facebook and Google are the two silverback gorillas in online advertising. So, still ads.
stephc_int13 3y ago
I'd say either Chrome, Android or YouTube.
- rasz 3y ago
  porque no los tress
loveparade 3y ago
YouTube
m463 3y ago
Identification. Google tracks and identifies the world. Notice that many google sub-sites are being folded into google.com? For example, kaiser now references google.com instead of googletagmanager.com so people are tracked individually when handling their medical issues. and they do it offline too.
lmpdev 3y ago
The combination of immense capital reserves and existing horizontal integration over a number of industries They have over a quarter of a trillion USD in capital reserves and have acquired (and subsequently given up on) over 250 companies They are in my view, Microsoft in its anti-trust era. This is only amplified by the more pervasive and aggressively anti-consumer industrial-user relations policy settings than the 1990s had
ricardo81 3y ago
The whole thing. They garner more revenue per search due to their critical mass of searchers and advertisers and can use this money to pay to be the default search option in browsers and mobile, to the point it would be loss making for any other search engine. Their analytics is present on many top sites so they can use browsing patterns to improve their results, on top of telemetry they get from Chrome. Perhaps only Facebook has something close to rivalling that kind of information. Googlebot and to an extent Bingbot are granted access to most sites that want to be crawled. Any new entrants have to jump through lots of hoops (e.g. Cloudflare) simply to crawl the same web they do. The UK's Competition and Market's Authority estimated that a credible competitor to Google would need to spend $20 billion just to be in a position to compete. There's a couple of companies that could realistically compete with their financial clout, one of them is paid ~$20billion a year to be the search default on iOS.
devsda 3y ago
Should be Chrome and Android. It is very difficult for a new player to grow in these areas. Both Chrome and Android are being "improved" with features that are beneficial for Google to build a moat around its search, ad and other businesses. In the early days it was search that drove chrome adoption and now its the other way around. With the low quality of search results, I doubt many would even notice if the default search engine is switched to something else.
- chrisco255 3y ago
  Chrome isn't really a moat though given that it's been forked by Microsoft, Brave, Vivaldi, Opera, and others.
  - turminal 3y ago
    With none of the forks removing any of the harmful features. Except possibly Brave, which replaces them with their own.
    - chrisco255 3y ago
      What harmful features would that be? Virtually all the forks remove Google's integrations.
- spaceman_2020 3y ago
  Android keeps losing market share among the affluent, monetizable audience. Apple is absolutely tearing Android apart in the Indian “premium” smartphone market right now.
acatton 3y ago
Its search index, in my personal opinion. A quarter of the websites on the internet are behind Cloudlfare/Akamai with anti-scraping enabled. Of course they want to end up on Google, so Google/Bing get a green light from Cloudflare. IMHO, that basically makes it impossible for anybody else to spin up an index and compete with Google Search. They cannot just scrape, they also have to work around anti-scraping measure by these CDNs. They have to maintain these workarounds, while trying to scrape as much as google has scraped so far, which is already a feat in itself. Once you have this, you have everything: a critical mass of users, ads, data set for AI, ... I dare anybody to scrape Reddit or Stackoverflow from scratch today.
- halflings 3y ago
  Like you said, Bing has their own search index. Why isn't everyone using Bing?
  - acatton 3y ago
    Because Google's index is much larger. According to estimates[1], Google indexes ~60 billions pages and Bing is only ~4 billions. If these numbers are close to reality, Bing index is 7% of Google's. IMHO, this leads to all the problems people complain about Bing. The algorithm is shit because they have less data to fine tune it, people use it less because the algorithm is shit or the results don't show up, so they cannot collect data to fine tune the algorithm more, ... [1] https://www.worldwidewebsize.com/ https://www.worldwidewebsize.com/
  - blackhaz 3y ago
    I'd dare to say one of the reasons is quite simple - Bing's ugly UX. When Google was just starting to gain popularity its search results weren't much better than Altavista's. Yet, its interface was much cleaner, it loaded and spewed out results faster, the overall experience was better. Bing is the Altavista. The user is bombarded with cookies, logotypes, ads, maps - all that complex layout right from the start. As a user you feel napalmed by information, and nobody likes that.
    - 3y ago
mythz 3y ago
The last Google service I'm likely to always use and pay for is YouTube Premium. I should be able to move off everything else after I retire.
chrisco255 3y ago
Android and YouTube. Secondarily I would say Workspace (Gmail, Meetings, Drive, etc for teams) and Cloud.
notarobot123 3y ago
I think it's the brand. Google is deeply embedded in schools, workplaces and the public imagination as synonymous with web search and collaborative digital tools. It has a monopoly on the public mindset for what the internet is for and how we can meaningfully use it.
paulpauper 3y ago
all of it? Adsense, adwords, youtube, android, chrome, search, gmail, etc.

What is Google's biggest moat these days?

by mg 3y ago

What is Google's biggest moat these days?

Every new startup sends their capital to Google to buy ads for their business. You make a new product, want to sell, where do you go? Marketing. Facebook and Google are the two silverback gorillas in online advertising. So, still ads.

stephc_int13 3y ago

I'd say either Chrome, Android or YouTube.

rasz 3y ago
porque no los tress

loveparade 3y ago

YouTube

m463 3y ago

Identification. Google tracks and identifies the world. Notice that many google sub-sites are being folded into google.com? For example, kaiser now references google.com instead of googletagmanager.com so people are tracked individually when handling their medical issues. and they do it offline too.

lmpdev 3y ago

The combination of immense capital reserves and existing horizontal integration over a number of industries They have over a quarter of a trillion USD in capital reserves and have acquired (and subsequently given up on) over 250 companies They are in my view, Microsoft in its anti-trust era. This is only amplified by the more pervasive and aggressively anti-consumer industrial-user relations policy settings than the 1990s had

ricardo81 3y ago

The whole thing. They garner more revenue per search due to their critical mass of searchers and advertisers and can use this money to pay to be the default search option in browsers and mobile, to the point it would be loss making for any other search engine. Their analytics is present on many top sites so they can use browsing patterns to improve their results, on top of telemetry they get from Chrome. Perhaps only Facebook has something close to rivalling that kind of information. Googlebot and to an extent Bingbot are granted access to most sites that want to be crawled. Any new entrants have to jump through lots of hoops (e.g. Cloudflare) simply to crawl the same web they do. The UK's Competition and Market's Authority estimated that a credible competitor to Google would need to spend $20 billion just to be in a position to compete. There's a couple of companies that could realistically compete with their financial clout, one of them is paid ~$20billion a year to be the search default on iOS.

devsda 3y ago

Should be Chrome and Android. It is very difficult for a new player to grow in these areas. Both Chrome and Android are being "improved" with features that are beneficial for Google to build a moat around its search, ad and other businesses. In the early days it was search that drove chrome adoption and now its the other way around. With the low quality of search results, I doubt many would even notice if the default search engine is switched to something else.

chrisco255 3y ago
Chrome isn't really a moat though given that it's been forked by Microsoft, Brave, Vivaldi, Opera, and others.
- turminal 3y ago
  With none of the forks removing any of the harmful features. Except possibly Brave, which replaces them with their own.
  - chrisco255 3y ago
    What harmful features would that be? Virtually all the forks remove Google's integrations.
spaceman_2020 3y ago
Android keeps losing market share among the affluent, monetizable audience. Apple is absolutely tearing Android apart in the Indian “premium” smartphone market right now.

acatton 3y ago

Its search index, in my personal opinion. A quarter of the websites on the internet are behind Cloudlfare/Akamai with anti-scraping enabled. Of course they want to end up on Google, so Google/Bing get a green light from Cloudflare. IMHO, that basically makes it impossible for anybody else to spin up an index and compete with Google Search. They cannot just scrape, they also have to work around anti-scraping measure by these CDNs. They have to maintain these workarounds, while trying to scrape as much as google has scraped so far, which is already a feat in itself. Once you have this, you have everything: a critical mass of users, ads, data set for AI, ... I dare anybody to scrape Reddit or Stackoverflow from scratch today.

halflings 3y ago
Like you said, Bing has their own search index. Why isn't everyone using Bing?
- acatton 3y ago
  Because Google's index is much larger. According to estimates[1], Google indexes ~60 billions pages and Bing is only ~4 billions. If these numbers are close to reality, Bing index is 7% of Google's. IMHO, this leads to all the problems people complain about Bing. The algorithm is shit because they have less data to fine tune it, people use it less because the algorithm is shit or the results don't show up, so they cannot collect data to fine tune the algorithm more, ... [1] https://www.worldwidewebsize.com/ https://www.worldwidewebsize.com/
- blackhaz 3y ago
  I'd dare to say one of the reasons is quite simple - Bing's ugly UX. When Google was just starting to gain popularity its search results weren't much better than Altavista's. Yet, its interface was much cleaner, it loaded and spewed out results faster, the overall experience was better. Bing is the Altavista. The user is bombarded with cookies, logotypes, ads, maps - all that complex layout right from the start. As a user you feel napalmed by information, and nobody likes that.
  - 3y ago

mythz 3y ago

The last Google service I'm likely to always use and pay for is YouTube Premium. I should be able to move off everything else after I retire.

chrisco255 3y ago

Android and YouTube. Secondarily I would say Workspace (Gmail, Meetings, Drive, etc for teams) and Cloud.

notarobot123 3y ago

I think it's the brand. Google is deeply embedded in schools, workplaces and the public imagination as synonymous with web search and collaborative digital tools. It has a monopoly on the public mindset for what the internet is for and how we can meaningfully use it.

paulpauper 3y ago

all of it? Adsense, adwords, youtube, android, chrome, search, gmail, etc.