Google’s monopoly is scary because it could abuse it.
Microsoft’s monopolies are more than scary because they havebeen abusing it for 20 years.
Google enjoys 95%+ market share in their core market because they are the best.
Microsoft enjoys 95% market share in their core market because of a positive feedback loop, not because it’s better. See: VHS vs Beta (although admittedly there is a case to be made that VHS was actually technically superior in some respects, but you get the point).
Look at the state of the browser. IE is clearly inferior to all the alternatives[*], yet it still commands ~70% market share due to it being bundled with Windows. Microsoft let IE6 rot for 5 years. If Google did that with their search engine, they’d be out of business.
That’s not to say Google’s position is not a cause for concern; just keep things in perspective.
Wayne: ´ I would wager if it was Red Hat, or Suse/Novell or Google or anybody else having a monopoly there wouldn’t have been half as much complaints.†ª
You’d have to explain to me how Red Hat or Suse could have a monopoly, as they sell Free/Open Source Software … you don’t have to give them a kopek to use their product, just download the source, ./configure and make install. Or alternatively download one of the 100 other distributions out there.
I remember when Google snatched up dejanews. At the time, Google was an up and comer and Deja.com was struggling along, but with a brilliant search engine tied to archived Usenet postings. Google was very smart in skirting the outside edges of search and became almost a silent monopoly overnight.
Until someone else can make a quantum jump in search technology and make it stick in the same way, Google will continue to dominate.
It gets even more interesting when you consider their diving into California’s Prop 8 debate. If you google for ‘Mormon’ the first paid link is from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I wonder what happens if I google for ‘irony’.
It’s well documented that Microsoft used to charge PC makers for a Windows licence for every PC shipped — even those that shipped without Windows. It was called the Microsoft tax. There is no equivalent Google tax that I know of. Microsoft spent many years playing hardball in the computer industry, and there’s now a lot of ill will built up around the brand. So far, Google has managed to avoid building up such ill will. Google doesn’t only seem less threatening: compared to Microsoft, it really is less threatening.
I’m a little surprised all the people who were so up in arms about the Microsoft ‘monopoly’ ten years ago aren’t out in the streets today lighting torches and sharpening their pitchforks to go after Google.
Google has done much to build good will among its users so that may be why there’s less venom thrown their way. They give back to the open source community. They do their best to not act like bullies. Their philosophy is do no evil. Their product is a quality product miles ahead of the competition that also happens to be free. Because they have competition, they aren’t a monopoly. If I don’t like them, it costs next to nothing to switch to a competitor(as opposed to changing your OS). They got to number 1 because their product is tops not because of anticompetitive practices or gaming the system type behavior. Google generally respects and works with, as opposed to being hostile to, the rest of the tech industry (for example, Google maps on Apple’s Iphone). Their top guys are all nerds, not bullies. Generally speaking, they do the right thing. See, there’s really no need to bite the hand that feeds you. Its just poor taste.
If you’re worried about privacy, doesn’t keep any personal info and aggregates across many engines. Seems pretty good too, but personally very conflicted - I like Google web history - it’s saved me a few times…
If ixquick allowed me to keep a local history that was as easy to search I’d switch tomorrow. FF history sucks for searching, imo.
I used to use Yahoo! and resisted to switch to Google at first. But Google was way better than Yahoo!. Now, show me a search engine much better than Google and I’ll change. That’s all…
Maybe we are angry and annoyed about it. Perhaps we just aren’t as vocal (or possibly or words aren’t coming through because your using google to try and find our anti-googleness? (j/k but wouldn’t that be interesting)).
I know that I’m working on moving away from google as my primary search engine. I started to move my email away from gmail to my personal domain, granted last week I moved my personal domain back to google but that changes in my life are making it so I can’t host my own mail server at the moment.
I refuse to use google calendars, notes, wiki, knol, so forth and so on.
I will use Open Source code that google helps but thats only if it runs local on my own machine.
i really belive google try not to be evil, but that’s just impossible to be well meaning 100% for everyone. add up the fact that google is a huge company , and there’s no way to keep that philosophy for long…
i belive the essential diference between google and microsoft is that it’s free for people.
I cannot speak for everyone, but at least for me, source code search engines (such as Koderz and Krugle) are becoming more and more important when looking for code examples. I am convinced that source code search will become more and more important in the future. The technologie for that is on the way. Imagine for example that you would just write in interface and some tests, and then search the intertubes from an implementation. Already today, there are research prototypes that (within limits) can get this done.
RE Google - maybe we aren’t up in arms because they aren’t evil.
That is - their tactics to be No. 1 were to create brilliant software that out-competed on its own merits.
Another company (whom Mu$t remain nameless) ensured that versions of its operating system would not be released without first ensuring a competetor’s application wouldn’t run. Sorry - but that’s evil.
Packaging up and integrating a product nobody wants with a product everyone else has just to gain market share… sorry - but that’s evil. This was done over and over… not a one-off.
On the other hand, Google created a brilliant search engine which does more than I would have ever thought I would want. That’s it. They didn’t stop on anyone. They didn’t ensure you couldn’t search for their competitors. They didn’t try to force gmail or igoogle account in order to use their search engine.
No - I think when all is said and done we don’t hate the search engine monopoly because it isn’t evil.
I’m OK with Google’s success. They have the best product, they work constantly to keep it the best product, they never engaged in any unfair or illegal business practices, and they use their success to do good things, like the REC project.
It is my understanding that Coke out sells Pepsi in almost every country around the world except USA, where Pepsi cola out sells every flavour of Coke. So Monopolies (or even duopolies and oligopolies) do not carry through all markets.
One other thing - monopolies (and other industries run by only a few companies) are either natural or transient.
Natural where it is expected that there will only be one player - like a postal service - and therefore should become governmet run as market forces will not work on them. As others have highlighted, they get to set the rules because nobody can go elsewhere.
Transient - A monopoly creates a barrier to entrance to the market, but over the long term no matter how large the barrier is, a competitor will always enter and out perform a long-standing monopoly. The reason is that a monopoly is economically unstable due to lack of innovative drive, and normally uncompetitive pricing structure. Think of other monopolies - they are normally the companies that are telling you about how they are innovating (why tell you if they actually WERE innovating), and can’t actually justify the prices the charge (because they don’t have to - i.e. oil companies).