
Google’s Dominance Is No Longer a Sure Thing - spking
https://www.wsj.com/articles/googles-dominance-is-no-longer-a-sure-thing-11559427954
======
zwaps
To some degree this is probably wishful thinking, but I feel the growing
contempt for Google's dismal stance on privacy (eg recent changes to Chrome)
may eventually harm their market share. This is especially true if it turns
out that personalized ads have less value than thought. For me, the change in
perception was certainly the reasom to switch from full on Google disciple to
deleting my accounts.

I argue this has certainly affected facebook already.

Then again, lots of wishful thinking, i admit.

~~~
ehsankia
Removing an API that let's any extension peep at every single request you make
is many things, but I don't see how it's "a dismal stance on privacy". FWIW
it's how Safari does it, and everyone always cheers Apple for their stance on
privacy, but then Google does it it's suddenly a dismal stance...

~~~
zwaps
Apple has equally gotten a lot of pushback for the adblocker. Safari's
approach is clearly inferior and has a lot of the same problems - compared to
uBlock Origin. When Apple blocked alternative approaches, everyone here on
hackernews was suspecting its because Apple's move into the ad business. I
think no one applauded Apple for trying to control what ads can be blocked. I
strongly suspect that Safari is much more vulnerable to tracking and anti-ad-
blocker scripts. Certainly if they come from Apple. I don't use it for that
reason. So no, this is not a distinction.

but Google also logs everything on phones and basically sells access to that
data. And every week they find new ways to pull a fast one on users who
thought they had disabled these "features". That's why Google is hated more.

------
Kemschumam
Today was the first day the quality of Google search results pushed me to
another search company (duck duck go). I was trying to find info on the
Virginia Beach shooting. And every query I tried brought the exact same
results. 'Virginia Beach shooting reddit' brought no reddit, only the same ~6
news sources. I wasn't even in a personalized algorithm bubble (using an
anonymous browser). The propaganda potential of Google seems to be actualizing
rapidly (or maybe just my cognizance of it).

~~~
cameronbrown
The reason they did this was fear of attack from the media. You can find
dozens of articles saying how Google & Facebook are "promoting the alt-right",
the end result being mainstream media sources more promoted than ever. Go
figure.

You can see the same thing on YouTube.

------
rileymat2
As a company Google can be very hard to work with.

A few months ago a few different software packages all were erroneously
flagged as malicious by Chrome, which then was picked up by Firefox. Bunches
of small vendors had nothing, there was no clear appeal process, there was no
one at Google to reach out to.

All there was, was a link to a message board staffed by volunteers, not Google
employees.

~~~
michaelchisari
The lack of meaningful support is a huge gap in our scale-at-all-costs and
automate-everything tech culture.

~~~
rileymat2
It is just frustrating because the entire business relies on downloads/sales.
And with a flip of an algorithm you are shut out of 80% of desktop market
share.

Not only that, if I Was presented with the message, I would be hesitant to
ever come back to that site, the reputational damage is lasting for the user.

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neonate
[http://archive.is/XGaPs](http://archive.is/XGaPs)

~~~
m_sahaf
Heads up for 1.1.1.1 users, archive.is DNS servers answer with bad address, so
you won't be able to view this page.

~~~
throwaway2048
This isnt true, you just get redirected to archive.fo

~~~
m_sahaf
It's[0] known[1] issue[2].

[0] [https://community.cloudflare.com/t/archive-is-
error-1001/182...](https://community.cloudflare.com/t/archive-is-
error-1001/18227/14)

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19828317](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19828317)

[2]
[https://twitter.com/archiveis/status/1018691421182791680](https://twitter.com/archiveis/status/1018691421182791680)

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ariwilson
Rupert Murdoch has had it out for Google for the last 5 years and the WSJ is
the vanguard of his effort.

[https://www.google.com/search?q=rupert+murdoch+google](https://www.google.com/search?q=rupert+murdoch+google)

------
Palptine
Sounds like pr when Google is under antitrust investigation

------
leereeves
Other than the clickbait headline, does this paywalled article add anything
not covered in previous discussions of the antitrust investigation of Google?

~~~
shakna
Suggestions that Google's position in the marketplace was already slipping due
to competition.

> Yet recent developments have demonstrated that even Google isn’t
> invulnerable. Alphabet’s most recent quarterly results showed a
> significant—and surprising—slowdown in Google’s ad business.

They suggest Amazon is eating into the advert industry, and it's hurting
Google in a big way, and that AWS and Azure are burning them on the cloud
front.

> And Google trails both Amazon and Microsoft by a wide margin in the fast-
> growing market for cloud computing services.

~~~
dingaling
”showed a significant—and surprising—slowdown in Google’s ad business."

Cleverly written by the WSJ to be misleading. It was actually a slowdown in
the _growth_ of their ad revenue. They still made more $ than previous period.

------
codingslave
I personally think google's inability to move past the their search and
advertising business model is because of their workforce and the incentives to
get promoted within the company. Blind hiring of programmers based on
algorithmic questions and blind promotion of people for launching new and
often poorly designed products has crippled the company.

~~~
enitihas
I don't think the hiring process is the reason for Google's inability to gain
market share in the cloud market. Google's hiring process has ensured that the
quality bar has been very high. They have unique offerings like spanner, which
other clouds are simply not anywhere near of. Their failure in cloud is mostly
because the inability to sell primarily, and secondly maybe because of their
support being not as good as other clouds. But both are specific classes of
directions taken by their leadership.

~~~
johan_larson
That's my take, too. Google is good at designing and building software
systems. They are also just fine at running them. Where they tend to have
trouble is sales and customer support. I expect that's a product of where they
had their biggest success: in help-yourself ad sales. I makes perfect sense
that an organization would double down on its strengths.

~~~
usrusr
I think it goes even a little deeper than that: "help yourself" can be scaled
to a level of profitability that is objectively impossible to reach once you
put humans in the loop. I don't think that Google is interested in diluting
their existing high profitability activities with lower profitability, so
whenever they enter a new market like cloud computing they effectively limit
themselves to the subset of that market that is open to absence of human
support. Just like on the other end of the scale, Oracle is limiting
themselves to the subset of their market that will gladly pay extra for the
privilege of getting overrun by salespersons.

edit: in other words, I think Google would rather have a highly profitable
slice of the market than dominate it and have all the gains eaten up by a
greedy sales org.

~~~
enitihas
I think all companies would want to "have a highly profitable slice of the
market than dominate it", since it ensures higher profits and frees you from
monopoly accusations, but only few have managed to work it in a good way (e.g,
Apple). In most markets where Google succeeded, they ended up being dominant.

~~~
scarface74
Apple didn’t do that by reducing cost. They have hundreds of physical retail
stores where they hire people directly (not contractors). They did it by
offering a product that people were willing to pay a premium for.

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1024core
Could someone please post a link to a non-paywalled article?

~~~
dazhbog
Here in HN you have to fight to read a WSJ article. WSJ articles are pure
quality, and for you normal human, to lay eyes on that supreme piece of
journalism, clicking "web" and playing with the referrer is not enough.

Jokes aside, can't bypass the paywall either.

~~~
Yhippa
Does the web link work for anybody? Hasn't worked for me in a long time.

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paul7986
Google who inspired me to create then invited me out to demo and spit in my
face SUCKS!

I met/was invited by many other huge tech companies who similarly no deal was
made but they were respectful and professional unlike arrogant/ignorant
Google! They have a history of doing this to those dreamers they inspired to
create.

Glad to see they are on the hot seat and I seldom use Google search anymore!
All my friends/peers/family/etc members know what I mean when I say I DDG(ed)
instead Googled it. Some start using DDG too cause they say Google sucks
too!!!

I wish I could get away from their other services!

~~~
LastManStanding
In what way did they "spit in your face"? Sounds like an interesting story.

~~~
paul7986
See my comment to this story in which an MIT student went for an interview
with them in which she declined their offer yet google went ahead and patented
her work. I met with those same scuzbags myself and back her story up.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18566929](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18566929)

Wonder why my comment here is being downvoted? It is relevant to what Google
is today ....run by arrogance and ignorance that’s catching up them!!

