This is a very ungrateful and childish perspective. It assumes that these things exist out of thin air rather than things google has created. Products don’t just appear, they’re built. Nothing is stopping someone from usurping google. Ever hear of oracle, intel, xerox, blackberry or Microsoft?
Almost all the things in this list were acquired from someone else that built them, rebranded, and then given away for free, taking much of the money out of the market that allowed that product to be built. Without Google giving away the one winner they chose to acquire, you'd have options again.
I built my free web stats service in 2004 because I couldn't afford an Urchin license. Google bought Urchin Live and rebranded it as Google Analytics, and gave it away for free. My service barely pays for itself 20+ years later, but I'm still here and would have an offering for that market on day one that Google Analytics shut down. So would dozens of others.
> Almost all the things in this list were acquired from someone else that built them, rebranded, and then given away for free
Nearly everything that was acquired was a) already free, and b) built (and given away for free) in hopes that someone like Google would acquire them.
If you look at most startups, their exit strategy is acquisition. Some would live to IPO, but that is a much tougher road.
It could be argued that IPO is a less likely exit strategy because of Google’s and others’ position, but I think it’s disingenuous to imply that startups (that are already giving away their products for free) are getting acquired as a last resort.
I don’t think so, at least, it’s not their main motivation.
For most, I imagine the VC fueled free period is to lock up customers and increase you have their sensitive data, you start making moves so you can start to charge them, usually a fairly hefty sum. It’s a classic lock in strategy.
Gmail is the only product you listed that Google started itself.
Google Maps was built on the acquisitions of Where 2 Technologies, Keyhole and ZipDash.
Chrome is based on WebKit, built at Apple.
Waymo's hardware came from the acquisition of 510 Systems, and the software came from the acquihiring of the team that developed Stanford's self-driving cars for the 2005 and 2007 DARPA challenges, who brought their code with them.
It's a more sophisticated perspective than you're giving it credit for.
They're not disputing that google has provided all these services, they're arguing that google's ability to subsidize them prevents market solutions for these same problems being produced.
The internet is, in this view, somewhat of a planned economy with Google as the central planning committee. You get google's maps and google's docs and google's search, rather than a maps marketplace, a docs marketplace, and a search marketplace.
Google is able to enforce this on the market because it holds a unique position where it can extract a significant amount of the value generated in the internet economy in 'ad taxes'.
