On: Ask HN: If Google is a monopoly, should we be doing anything about it?

[axod]

Is eBay?

[zandorg → axod]

eBay is losing its monopoly due to lameness.

Also, Froogle is a definite eBay competitor, and Google lists brand new products, too.

You used to be able to buy old hardware cheap off eBay, but their stupid fees have ruined buying cheap stuff.

Also older eBay stuff seems to break down quite quickly these days.

[axod → zandorg]

Surely eBay has a far higher market share of "Online auctions" than google has of "Online search" though. That was my point.

[zandorg → axod]

It's close enough for both to be similiarly monopolous.

[frossie → zandorg]

Okay first, neither eBay or google are a monopoly in the technical sense.

But in principle, eBay can defend its market dominance more than google.

Say there is eBay, and eBayCompetitor. eBay starts off with all the customers. As a single seller or buyer, I can chose to move to eBayCompetitor but it does me no good - if there are no sellers or buyers at eBayCompetitor except me, the site is useless.

On the other hand, if everybody is at Google and someone starts GoogleCompetitor, I can leave Google and GoogleCompetitor would work just fine for me, because it doesn't matter whether anybody else uses GoogleCompetitor. You could end up with some kinds of semi-steady state like in the browser wars.

The problem in practice with search engines is that I am starting to get the idea that the "market" likes having a single search engine to worry about/buy ads to/manipulate ranks for. So it is possible than in reality there is some pressure against GoogleCompetitor gaining traction.