
Ask HN: Is Google a Monopoly or just really good at building useful products? - enosanto
I know that Google is super powerful and has great products but what exactly are (if any) examples of Google showing anti-competitive behaviour?
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ardy42
> I know that Google is super powerful and has great products but what exactly
> are (if any) examples of Google showing anti-competitive behaviour?

At least at one point, they nagged you incessantly to install Chrome when you
used Google Search. I would attribute Chrome's current _dominance_ [1] to that
fact, and that fact alone. That's uncannily like the anti-competitive behavior
Microsoft was judged to have used to push Internet Explorer into a dominant
position and drive Netscape out of the market.

[1] If Chrome had been allowed to grow its market share organically, I think
would have still been popular, just not dominant. Firefox would have a bigger
market share than it does now, for instance.

~~~
mav3rick
That is such BS. Microsoft is making it increasingly harder to use a different
browser on their OS. No mention of that. When they do it, "it's their OS, it's
fair". Google is not forcing anyone to install this browser nor does it auto
install when you navigate to Google search.

~~~
ardy42
> That is such BS. Microsoft is making it increasingly harder to use a
> different browser on their OS. No mention of that. When they do it, "it's
> their OS, it's fair".

What's with the attitude? I listed Microsoft as an _example_ of anti-
competitive behavior. How did you get from there to thinking I'd penned some
kind of endorsement of Microsoft?

> Google is not forcing anyone to install this browser nor does it auto
> install when you navigate to Google search.

The problem is that they're using (or used) their dominance in one area as
leverage to gain dominance in another area.

------
gojomo
The "or" in the question is a false dichotomy. Many historic examples of
monopolistic abuse originated from market power that was initially acquired
via excellence in innovation or execution.

Also many anti-competitive behaviors, like certain
pricing/tying/bundling/cross-subsidization strategies, are perfectly legal for
a small operator, but _become_ illegal when a firm gains immense market power.
And there is rarely a "bright line" for when a firm crosses that threshold,
and the things it used to do become illegal. The firm pretty much has to wait
for pushback via prosecution – actual or threatened – and of course will keep
denying there's anything wrong with their habitual practices indefinitely, as
a matter of corporate culture.

~~~
narag
Exactly. Also being a monopoly isn't illegal. That was talked about a lot at
the time of Microsoft anti-trust case. What's illegal is using your monopoly
position to get unfair advantage in _other_ markets.

------
HALtheWise
When I worked at Google as an intern, there were lots of people internally
that were very aware that most of their core products don't have a locked in
monopoly like Amazon, Facebook, or Apple do. For example, after the Cambridge
Analytica stuff, lots of people wanted to leave Facebook, but mostly aren't
able to due to network effects. In contrast, using Bing instead of Google
Search is so easy that I do so occasionally when I'm having trouble finding
something through Google. If their product was suddenly worse than the
competition, they could lose their entire user base in days, because the
network effects of personalized search are nowhere near the network effects of
Facebook. The same is true for Maps, Gmail (data export is allowed), Drive,
Photos, Chrome, Ads (for websites) and most of their other core products. I
guess the question of whether they "are a monopoly" is largely dependent on
what your definition of monopoly is, but the lack of lock-in means they aren't
able to exploit their market dominance in most of the ways that traditionally
make monopolies problematic. Google Play / Android is a good example where
this is less true, although alternate Android app stores and OS's do exist
(see Amazon's attempt to make Fire OS)

------
kiernanmcgowan
Monopolistic behavior and strong product development practices are not
mutually exclusive.

Google can put in the effort to make a great new product, but use its market
dominance to make sure that it’s products have a better chance to succeed vs
it’s competitors.

------
thayne
Regardless of whether they abuse their monopoly power or not, it is undeniable
that Google is either a monopoly or member of an oligopoly in several areas,
including: search, advertisement (adwords), email (gmail), cloud
infrastructure (GCP), navigation (google maps), SaaS productivity suite
(google docs), mobile operating systems (android), web browsers (chrome), etc.

Google certainly isn't as bad at abusing its monopoly power as it could be,
but, well, it certainly isn't perfect either.

~~~
98codes
Out of everything in that list, I’d say GCP doesn’t belong. AWS is the beast
in that space, with GCP running third at best.

------
enjoyz
In search, there have been instances where they've put their weight behind
some products (Yelp vs Google reviews).

It is also under scrutiny in the EU. Their antidote seems to be creating
Alphabet and styling Google as an advertising company rather a search engine.

That said, I for one, think they haven't put out and succeeded with subpar
products by the sheer force of their control over search (Google Plus, Google
Buzz, ...).

------
tomohawk
One definition of a monopoly is the Sherman Antitrust Act - 75% or more market
share.

Google has a monopoly in search (90% or more share) and they also control
north of 60% of internet ad revenue, and they have a monopoly in browsers.

Google repeatedly has leveraged monopolies in one area to gain monopolies in
other areas.

They also store tons of data on all of us, whether we want to use them or not.
Since that data is not on devices we own, it is easy pickings for law
enforcement to get ahold of as the traditional protections do not apply. If
NSA or some government agency collected this data with so little oversight or
protection, it would be outrageous. They wouldn't get away with saying "We
promise not to be evil".

If Google cuts off service to you, good luck. You have little recourse.

Google enters markets, dominates them with a product, and then drops the
product, destroying the market.

Google is also highly partisan, overwhelmingly backing a single political
party. This is unhealthy to say the least.

------
krm01
They have their share of failed products (see
[https://www.computerworlduk.com/galleries/it-
vendors/google-...](https://www.computerworlduk.com/galleries/it-
vendors/google-graveyard-3508070/%3famp))

Their position allows them to distribute their products to a larger audience,
quicker than others for sure, but I don’t believe that’s a formula for success
per se.

Successful products like Gmail, grew like a scrappy startup working on a great
product would grow.

The first version Paul made was just a search engine for _his own_ email. He
then shared it with some friends/colleagues.

Gradually more features were added to improve the product and now we all have
Gmail.

I’m sure the Google brand helped with distribution at some point later on, but
users aren’t stupid. They pick the product they love using (unless they’re
forced in an enterprise type of environment)

~~~
wai1234
You write about Gmail as if no one had email before that. GMail doesn't have a
single meaningful feature that other clients didn't have before. And those
clients didn't completely redo the UI every 3 months whether you want it or
not.

~~~
thayne
When it first came out, gmail was significantly better than the competition,
for the following reasons:

1\. _much_ better spam filtering

2\. _much_ better searching

3\. a _lot_ of storage (no need to delete old emails)

~~~
shereadsthenews
When Gmail came out it was also a gigantic money incinerator into which Google
shoveled search ads revenue. It is easy to show that Google used one product
line to break into another line of business. It would be harder to convince me
that this harmed consumers.

~~~
candiodari
Anti-monopoly law is not meant to prevent companies from _investing_ in
different product lines. Monopoly law is meant to prevent companies from using
one product to force customers to buy into another product.

~~~
shereadsthenews
But dumping is also against (American) antitrust laws.

------
prithvi24
Google is pretty monopolistic. They have shown anti-competitive behavior with
local, maps, etc. Would create a more competitive marketplace if Google has
broken up into separate publicly traded entities (ie like Waymo)

~~~
solarkraft
It would be great - and I think the move to Alphabet was a preparation for
that.

------
nknealk
This may be downvoted to oblivion, but here goes:

I think part of the problem with our current framing of what is "anti-
competitive" or "monopolistic" focuses on consumers. A classical monopolist
artificially limits supply and drives up prices to maximize profits (see, for
example, the business practices of Standard Oil). That's completely orthogonal
to Google's business model for two reasons:

1) For consumers, most products have no downward mobility in price from
competition. The search is already free (ie. literally the lowest price
possible). How can something be bad for consumers if it's free? Similar things
can be said of gmail, maps, etc. 2) Google doesn't limit supply of its
products within reasonable use (when's the last time you got a communication
from Google demanding you do fewer searches?)

I think the question you should perhaps ask is "when we consider regulating
behavior of large firms, is regulation that's good for consumers actually good
for society?"

~~~
dredmorbius
Very much the case, and you can thank/blame Robert Bork for this.

Earlier comment:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18436387#18436772](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18436387#18436772)

I'm liking Lina Kahn's take:

[https://www.yalelawjournal.org/note/amazons-antitrust-
parado...](https://www.yalelawjournal.org/note/amazons-antitrust-paradox)

~~~
nknealk
Wow, your comment is far better cited than mine. Also, Bork wasn't necessarily
wrong for the era he lived in.

I think we don't yet have a good vocabulary to describe the kind of bad
behavior we see in large tech firms. People use "monopoly" because it's the
first word that comes to mind when a large firm is acting badly, but
Google's/Facebook's/etc behavior does not fit our current definition.

~~~
dredmorbius
Bork was, I'm pretty convinced, far beyond wrong. His rationalisation was
tremendously useful to those who benefited from that wrongness.

That's a longer story.

------
chrisco255
There was that time they colluded with Apple not to compete for talent and
keep salaries artificially low.

[https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-fi-tn-apple-google-
co...](https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-fi-tn-apple-google-
conspiracy-20140523-story.html)

~~~
MatthaeusHarris
That's an argument for them being a monopsony, not a monopoly. And since they
were colluding with other companies, it fits the definition of a cartel
better.

------
1024core
Google builds lots of failed products too (hint: Google+). They make up for it
in sheer volume ;-)

~~~
mav3rick
What is wrong in trying and failing ?

~~~
dreamcompiler
Nothing. But that's not what Google usually does. Much more often, Google
tries _and succeeds_. People begin using the product because it's good, and
then Google arbitrarily kills it [0]. I've been burned by this behavior enough
that I now avoid Google products whenever possible, no matter how great they
seem.

[0] [https://killedbygoogle.com/](https://killedbygoogle.com/)

------
eitland
> I know that Google is super powerful and has great products

I'd say Google used to be a whole lot better.

> but what exactly are (if any) examples of Google showing anti-competitive
> behaviour?

Chrome:

\- how they push it (massive advertising, bundling etc)

\- how they use their massive web properties to make other browsers look bad

------
Marsymars
Anti-competitive behaviour doesn't require a monopoly, e.g. dumping or tying.

~~~
dredmorbius
Google provides its key technology for no cost, subsidised by advertising.

Search, Chrome, YouTube, Maps, Gmail, Android, Google+.

And it frequently ties these to requirements.

------
giarc
I'm no expert but I believe to move from "great product builder" to "monopoly"
you have to actively block others from competing or doing things that would
prevent their success.

------
wai1234
Why do you believe Google is "really good at building useful products"? Would
you buy any of them if they didn't have the Google brand (or pay for any of
the free ones for that matter)?

~~~
TallGuyShort
I'm sure the Google brand has helped adoption, but I do actually pay for G
Suite and it's pretty hard to beat if you're starting a business and want a
pretty no-nonsense productivity suite everyone can work together on.

------
itsthedata123
Data.

Data.

Data.

The only reason Google has anything they have is their data and their user
lock in.

The software and culture are nice, as are the lunches. But seriously, their
data is the only thing that keeps them from becoming one player among many.

------
NelsonMinar
Google Ads is very much a self-supporting monopoly. Turns out online ads are a
winner-take-all market, as Overture/Yahoo discovered in their demise.

~~~
repolfx
Google Ads isn't a monopoly. Most obviously Facebook runs its own ad networks,
but also, I see tons of ads when I browse around that come from other ad
networks. There are hundreds of the things.

------
huntleydavis
They monopolize a resource : big data

------
joeshmoe23
There is no monopoly when your stuff is free, has virtually zero replacement
cost and no lock-in.

The "google is a monopoly" trope was introduced and cultivated by Steve
Ballmer's Microsoft and it's being constantly adopted and revised by anyone
with an axe to grind.

~~~
quickthrower2
Google has a monopoly on search advertising which is not free.

~~~
joeshmoe23
"search advertising" is a curiously narrow distinction, the market is
"advertising" and they own but a sliver of it.

~~~
quickthrower2
I’d be interested in what you class as a monopoly? You can always expand or
shrink a market definition to suit whatever agenda.

Using DeBeers as an example (from the Wikipedia article on monopoly), they
could be argued to not have a monopoly, because diamonds are a sliver of the
gifting market.

~~~
joeshmoe23
Isn't that what you're doing?

Search ads isn't the only way to reach people and it's not an impediment for
new entrants as shown by Amazon's ad business.

As for the general matter, google has the right to publish and design their
website however they see fit, it's a no brainer, the only reason this question
keeps popping up is that google has very powerful enemies in basically all
news and publishing companies (they blame it for their dwindling ad revenue),
not to mention the oracles and yelps of the world and all of them are
piggybacking on the infrastructure laid down by microsoft at the time.

~~~
quickthrower2
Ok maybe monopoly isn’t the word, but what’s the word that describes how it is
virtually impossible for anyone else to write a seriously competing search
engine, given the resources, trade secrets and patents Google has.

Also can you give me an example of a true monopoly as per your definition.
Even the US government doesn’t have a tax monopoly because there are other
countries you can live in.

~~~
mav3rick
You are literally disincentivizing anyone making any company. Every company
will have it's secret sauce. You're blaming Google for being "so good " that
"it's no fair".

------
waffleguy
You could google it, but I doubt you’ll get good results

------
3327
Google is known in the valley to be notoriously bad at building products.

Does that answer your question?

------
Dahoon
>Is Google a monopoly?

Yes in more than one area. The lowest hanging fruit (which will cause
downvotes): Google Play. No one can release anything Google disagrees with on
Google Play.... but google could. Google and Apple really should be separated
from their stores. They know _everything_ that happens on them and no one can
compete against that.

Bundling Chrome with Android (and Apple apps in iOS) is no different than
Microsoft bundling IE or Windows media player.

~~~
pgeorgi
> No one can release anything Google disagrees with on Google Play

Recent Android versions made it ever easier to install apps without using the
Play Store: I have F-Droid installed and whitelisted (so no warnings every
time an apk appears), which required toggling a permission switch the system
pointed out to me.

As for Chrome, apparently various vendors ship their own browser as default
although it seems they still have to ship Chrome as alternative.

~~~
Dahoon
>Recent Android versions made it ever easier to install apps without using the
Play Store

Yes I'm using it myself but how is that making Google Play less of a monopoly?
F-droid can't sell apps on the play store without using Google.

~~~
pgeorgi
> F-droid can't sell apps on the play store without using Google

"I can't sell my organic bananas at Walmart without dealing with Walmart"?

I can understand ideas that there shouldn't be a "default store" on devices.
Or that Android's certification (whatever that is called) shouldn't require
pre-installing the play store as only option. I may or may not agree with
them.

But "I should be able to sell my wares at a store without dealing with its
owner/operator" sounds strange to me.

