
Isn't it a good thing for everyone if Google has Monopoly? - user-on1
If Google has Monopoly in more areas like<p>Real Estate<p>Construction<p>Healthcare<p>Wouldn&#x27;t those industries be more efficient for end customers?
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warrenm
No one (except, possibly, the monopolist) is better off when monopolies exist

How well have [effective] monopolies on internet or cable services worked-out
for you?

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user-on1
Speaking of monopoly in general may be out of scope of this post. But If
Google can attain Monopoy wouldnt it do more good. Alphabet can be making 10x
more revenue if they start charging for all the service they provie, but they
seem to be happy with making reasonable profit which in their case ended up
being huge. The leadership of the organization which attains monopoly is key
here.

~~~
warrenm
The monopolist, for some time, may "do better" than in a competitive market.

But unless they continue to _act_ as if they're competing, they _will_
stagnate.

Remeber AltaVista? The amazing search engine from DEC? No? Why? Because
Google.

Just in the search space, there are many "better" search engines - which is
why Google, to continue with this exemplar, is _NOT_ a _search engine company_
.. they are an _advertising company_ which happens to have a good search
engine, decent mobile OS, good enough map apps (they do own Waze, after all),
great social network, etc

The advantage of the ecosystem Google has is they can be "good enough" in
several areas that have _far better_ individual options: but DuckDuckGo, for
example, doesn't have a web-based office suite. Or a mobile OS. Or a maps
service. Or a browser. Or. Or. Or. Or.

It is the _ecosystem_ that ties people in. (No doubt, Apple, Microsoft, and
others have various takes on the whole ecosystem thing, too - I'm just
sticking with Google because it's who you singled-out.)

I rarely hit "google" when I "google" \- I find results off DDG, Bing, and
Qwant are "better" (and have each as the default search provider in different
browsers).

What, inherently, makes you think Google (or any other company) would (or
does) "do good"? Companies exist for one purpose - maximizing shareholder
value. So long as they don't run [too] afoul of the law, they'll operate in
more-or-less whatever manner they can, by-and-large, that accomplishes that
end goal.

And who gets to decide your mythic "reasonable profit"? You? Me? "The
government"? Some other external organization? Is it 10% net profit? 30%? 50%?
80%? 255%? How is that number decided upon? Why is it _that_ value and not
some other value? What happens if "reasonable profit" is defined as 30%, but
they happen to make a profit of 40% this quarter/year/etc? Who gets to decide
where that "unreasonable" percentage goes?

And sure, you _might_ happen to get a "BDFL" in charge of the company ...
_today_. What about _tomorrow_? It's the age-old problem with absolute (or
near-absolute) monarchies / dictatorships /etc: you _might_ get a Marcus
Aurelius. But you get Nero, too.

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oblib
There's not much historical evidence I know of that shows monopolies are more
efficient or strive harder to benefit their customers.

That's not to say that they don't provide benefits. There are lots of examples
of that, but more often they tend to squeeze the most out of their monopoly
and ignore looking into providing newer, better, and less costly services.

Consider Sears & Amazon. There's no good reason why Sears didn't evolve into
an Amazon like business model except they didn't have the vision or motivation
to embrace change.

If you read Theodore Houser's book, "Big Business And Human Values" you'll see
how different the company became after they went public (it was employee owned
when he ran it).

I suspect that to a significant extent both Google and Amazon are still
controlled by those who got them where they are, and this is why they aren't
squeezing as much profit out of revenue and instead reinvesting much of it in
acquisitions and development.

When or if they ever become entirely owned by investors is when they will
start to decay, just like Sears.

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nxsynonym
Google is not a non-profit, they can and will do anything to make a profit. If
they have a complete monopoly there's no reason to keep prices competitive,
because there is no competition.

