The Elephant in the Room: Google Monoculture

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Here is what Google needs to do before people will be lighting torches and sharpening their pitchforks.

  1. Chrome will need to get 99% market share.
  2. With each release of Chrome, Yahoo and Microsoft will need to tweak their sites to make it render correctly in Chrome.
  3. Google web sites will work better in Chrome, because Google will use undocumented APIs.

Sounds crazy doesn’t it - but that what we had to put up with the Microsoft ecosystem.

I wouldn’t put Google anywhere near the level of the Microsoft monopoly - yet.

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The Google monopoly isn’t on search. It’s on contextual advertising. The fact that you can switch to Yahoo is immaterial because it is the consumers of advertising (that is, the companies that advertise) who cannot switch, because you are not switching even though you could.

It’s as though people were arguing whether Microsoft has a monopoly on notepad, calc, solitaire, and minesweeper (which probably are among the most used applications of all time), since all of them have many alternatives that you can very easily switch to. Especially calc where it’s generally easier (IMO) to just type your math into a search engine. In actual fact, those switching costs don’t matter because that’s not the real monopoly, that’s just a support for the monopoly.

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Most of what I know about life has been cached by Google; this comment too!

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Comparing Google to Microsoft is like comparing Apples to Oranges.

Like a previous posted mentioned, moving from Google to simply typing ‘yahoo.com’ in a web browser and making the switch, is not even close to the complexity from switching to Linux or MAC from Microsoft Windows. By LEAPS AND BOUNDS…

Yes, we all know JEFF ATWOOD is a Microsoft VB programmer, so it a bit in defense of Microsoft technology. Jeff as loads of years invented in Microsoft technology. Understandable.

But, this creates bias comments. Bipartisanship to Microsoft.

Google, is just a ‘cloud’ product. They sell very little, if anything at all that is sold in a BOX on a self. There is ZERO vendor lockin. all one does is goto a different web site to do their search AND advertising.

Good services deserves majority usage.

The problem with bringing Microsoft into the picture, and even attempting to defend them with, ‘Oh Google is so huge, why don’t they get slapped around too?’, is that Microsoft has a ‘ninja sale force’ that use shrewed and ILLEGAL tactics, to use their monopoly in FEAR of competition. This is WRONG and unethical. Yes, even USA business should have ethics, or at least go by the anti-monopoly rules that were passed by US Congress, which Microsoft continues to ignore.

Also, Microsoft has been getting a beating by Vista bad reviews, the netbook running linux and general open free software alternatives, they are now EXTORTIONISTS. (http://boycottnovell.com/ or groklaw.net)

Microsoft, has not been convicted of extortion, but they will in due time, my friends. Then they will be a convicted monopolist and extortionist corporation. Not good.

Yes, I follow and Use Open source Linux, I do like Macs, and I use Vista all the time to play EVE Online. I was raised on MS Visual Studio, VB and their technologies. I have even had two 1 year contracts at MS. So, It’s not like I am some fan boy of alternatives to MS.

What I am a fan boy of is CHOICE.

If people CHOOSE Google, cuz they rock. Good! I think yahoo mail is AWESOME with all the UI and Ajax going on. Gmail is good too… Point is I use both, not because I am FORCED to, or it is a pain to make any kind of switch.

However, I HAVE no choices, when it comes to running many games and apps on alternative OSs besides Microsoft. This is called vendor Lock in. This is were things become a problem. Windows XP was leaps and bounds better then Windows 98. But, Vista is sad to say, bloated compared to XP and a down grade. Windows 7 is just going to be Vista SP2 in my view.

So, morale of the story is. ALL technology is good. (So, long as malware and viruses don’t infest your computer and loss you Identify to theives.) Oh and did I mention, 80% of the spam in the world comes from zombie Microsoft Windows computers?

Anyways, I digress. Pick what you want to use. Just be careful what society TELLS you, what you should use. be intelligent and don’t be biased. (As much as you can, anyways).

Love,
Matt

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Did I mention stack overflow?

Well, that is what I spend all day doing, so naturally I’m going to mention it. It’s not really the focus of the article, though.

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if it were microsoft, it would be all right tho, wouldn’t it

My point is that a monopoly is dangerous stuff, no matter how or why it came about.

The same reason why we have an Executive, Legislative, and Judicial branches in the US government. Without realistic competition, how can there be viable checks and balances? Even the fake competition of Coke vs. Pepsi (and even factoring in the way these guys collude on pricing some of the time) is clearly better than Coke alone.

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What can we do?

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From the searcher’s point of view, the Google monopoly is much less scary because it takes very little effort to switch. Compare it to trying to move from Windows to Linux, let alone Windows to Mac.

The others may not be delivering traffic, but they’re delivering competition simply by existing. The second Google gets a reputation for not returning good results for whatever reason (especially nefarious reasons), one of the others will become the standard. Microsoft has had almost 30 years of providing second-best-at-best operating systems, and the lock-in is only now being challenged.

Google also shows a lower propensity for using the monopoly in one area to eliminate competition in other areas. Tons of people still use Yahoo and Hotmail email, for example. That also makes it less scary.

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Also on a political/idea sharing perspective, doesn’t it scare you to think about people all over the world searching for democracy and what they will find on the first page?

Does Google, in the end, polarizes everything, reducing the scope (to the first two pages of results) of all queries to results that are consistent to all users?

I know they are doing localization efforts and that’s obvious but to what extend? On what criteria? What/who decided when a query must returned localized results Vs global results?

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I agree that the comparison to Microsoft is unfair. Microsoft didn’t get into legal trouble because they were large and successful like Google. The got slapped around in the courts because they deliberately abused their position. Read Microsoft’s own internal (leaked) memos from the 1990’s stifling open source competitors to their products by intentionally locking consumers into their platforms and de-commoditizing protocols (their own words).

By contrast, Google’s products (most of which are free from a consumer standpoint) are very open and interoperable.

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Simple: Google isn’t included on my PC by default, and it doesn’t threaten OEMs over disloyalty. Also, they make an effort to be compatible with many services and devices beside their own, so there’s less danger of long-term lock-in.

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jeff - on so podcast number 15 or 16 i thought you said about:blank was your homepage?

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I think we will see more and more pitchforks as the economy continues to degrade. Investors will demand that google behave more like every other corporation and the honeymoon will end. The DOJ is already throwing around the M word.

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Whatever you point of view, let’s give a big round of applause to Jeff for daring to bite the hand that feeds him (and most of us).

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I think Sandy’s got it right. The Google monopoly seems a lot less scary than it’s marketshare would suggest because a new search engine is only a click away. Unlike Microsoft, which went to considerable lengths to lock people in to Windows and Office, Google’s dominance is entirely based on mindshare. People who decide they don’t like Google don’t have to buy expensive hardware or install an operating system maintained by altruistic hippies, they just have to type Live or Yahoo into their address bar.

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What can we do? Use Yahoo or Live as your default search engine.

I’ve been doing this about a week, and I kind of like the new view. I just took my Firefox search bar and had it use another search engine by default.

The reason there are no pitchforks like there were with Microsoft is people have the illusion of choice. Sure, you can do like I did and switch search engines. But you cannot make a huge impact on your own.

Microsoft tried to control the individual (bad idea) AND company (normal business practice) and Google is trying to control only the company (websites). That’s why no one is up in arms about that.

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I thought it was just me, most of the domains I have search engine referal statistics for also show that google utterly dominates the set.

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I guess the only reason Google gets its way is because it is still the best. Look at Microsoft even though people had been complaining about it for years it still won all the time because there was no competitor, It was only recently that Linux became enough user friendly to give MS a run for its money.
So the problem is not with Google, it is that we have stopped developing. We have cut short our reaches. I mean try yahoo, MSN, Google and various other search engines, you are bound to get the best results from Google. Plus Google offers the most integrated environment to work as well. You get a streamlined RSS reader, A calander, an email account and great sear capabilities.
While there are many other websites that offer the same functionality but Google still wins over them.
And as far as competition goes i think google still needs to improve. Like i prefer to use Zoho office rather than Google Docs. Also chrome is a great alternative to Internet Explorer but i Still use FF.
So like always Google at the end is a Company that will work for profit, even if it wants to make a better internet then too it will not be pushed till its full potential untill there is someone better than it!

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As most everyone else has said, you have your pick of search engines without constraining your pick of websites. That’s key.

If i wake up tomorrow and drop Windows for say, FreeBSD, then i have to go get all new desktop apps. I have to get a new job, since my employer expects me to write and test software for Windows.

If i wake up tomorrow and decide to use Y! for search, it takes… two clicks, and affects only the part of my life that i want it to, the results i’m given when i search the web.

That’s quite a difference…

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I love the photo! Where’s it from?