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Google's "search results" are the textbook definition of a monopolized good/service. The whole thing is almost a casino, rigged to the point of absurdity. Ther

Google's "search results" are the textbook definition of a monopolized good/service. The whole thing is almost a casino, rigged to the point of absurdity. There has been nothing in my life so disillusioning as working on a Web app for a company that is more or less required to play Google's game.

timmg 2y ago
> There has been nothing in my life so disillusioning as working on a Web app for a company that is more or less required to play Google's game. Have you built any iOS apps?
- LeonB 2y ago
  Ha, well said. Having both of these experiences makes one even more against the tyranny of monopolists.
- brookst 2y ago
  While true and a fair point, iOS is Apple’s platform in a way that the web is most certainly not Google’s.
  - lotsofpulp 2y ago
    I hardly use Google, and I use the internet. DDG/Kagi/ChatGPT/Reddit/HN/etc for searching. Fastmail/myriad order email providers. Openstreetmap/Apple for maps. YouTube and Chrome Remote Desktop are what I use Google for, but those have alternatives too.
    - jonhohle 2y ago
      The concern is if you are developing for the web, how much time do you need to spend appeasing Google to show up in search results and be discoverable. When I was at Amazon the majority of direct product traffic did not come internal search, it came from Google. In some areas they were competitors, Amazon was beholden to Google as the starting point for most customer’s browsing experience.
    - EasyMark 2y ago
      It’s not just monopoly it’s googles abuse. How many times have they been sued successfully and fined by the government for abusing the position as a large corporation, I’d say it’s legion. I wish the government was more vigilant in using their power to kill corporations outright after so many abuses of power
  - jonhohle 2y ago
    It’s odd how this is lost on people. Want to develop a game for PlayStation, Sony will need to approve. Want to develop a Facebook app, FB will gatekeep. If you wanted to make apps for the Danger Hiptop, you published through Danger. iOS is Apple’s consolized OS for their own hardware. It’s not a PC platform that anyone can put on whatever device they want. For better or worse.
    - Workaccount2 2y ago
      I think there is a reasonable breaking point though, where the platform becomes so ingrained in society that you are left out of social groups if you don't join. "iPhone Families" is a very real thing that Apple has gone out of it's way to solidify. Or try being an (American) 15 year old kid and get included in group chats with an android phone. It's pretty gross when a mega-corp is so powerful that it can leverage your friends and family against you, forcing you into their walled prison err.. garden.
      - consteval 2y ago
        Personally, I think the breaking point is when the device transitions from "appliance" or niche device to general computer. I think at a time a phone could be considered an appliance. But that's changed, and for many people their smartphone is their only general personal computer.
    - CivBase 2y ago
      When you're a part of a duopoly on a product that is necessary for participating in the modern economy with as much friction as iOS has for switching to the only viable competitor... what makes it so fundamentally different from the web? IMO they can either keep the duopoly and deal with regulation or they can keep full control of their platform. One or the other. Same goes for Android.
      - jonhohle 2y ago
        So if a business mode is successful, regardless of whether it’s actively thwarted competition or acted anticompetitively, it should be regulated? It’s not the web. It’s not a PC. It’s a sandboxed console. > MO they can either keep the duopoly and deal with regulation or they can keep full control of their platform. Then they’ll keep they’re platform and not be regulated ;-) (I know what you meant).
  - isodev 2y ago
    Just following this thought then the remedy will be forcing Apple to allow alternative OS and firmware on their devices, allowing consumers to choose what they do with the device hardware they purchased?
    - ineedaj0b 2y ago
      No, it would be buying an android phone
      - isodev 2y ago
        Buying a phone from another vendor is only viable if Apple/Google didn't try to lock you in. Of course we know that's not true - you can't just go elsewhere and that's by design.
    - mouse_ 2y ago
      Ownership and security are at odds. The only remedy would be forcing Apple to allow the owner of the device to run whatever they would like on it, unfortunately this does include malware.
      - nolist_policy 2y ago
        This is a false dilemma thought. The secure solution is to treat every app as malicious and put it in a sandbox where it can not cause harm. See also Android and ChromeOS.
        CamperBob2 2y ago
        In the broadest sense, an app that "can not cause harm" can't do anything useful. To the industry's dominant players, "causing harm" means empowering the user to venture outside their walled gardens... or even to see outside them. So, no, sandboxing everything in sight isn't a useful solution. Your sandbox will just imprison us all.
    - brookst 2y ago
      I’m not a subscriber to the “if I choose to buy a product, I get to dictate product design decisions for the company” school of thought. Buy it or don’t. If you want X there is no right do demand Y turn into X.
  - chipdart 2y ago
    > While true and a fair point, iOS is Apple’s platform in a way that the web is most certainly not Google’s. OP was whining over Google's role in Android. Pointing out Apple's control of iOS, and the fact that iPhone is by far the dominant platform for handhelds, does refute OP's personal assertion.
ApolloFortyNine 2y ago
>Google's "search results" are the textbook definition of a monopolized good/service. Defining a market as a specific search engine's search results is wild. Wouldn't every search engine have a monopoly over it's results? A grocery store monopoly over its shelves? Etc.
- Forgeties79 2y ago
  When you are the only grocery store for 500mi yes you functionally have a “monopoly over your shelves.”
  - lenerdenator 2y ago
    There's Bing and DDG (aka "Bing without tracking").
    - Forgeties79 2y ago
      Bing barely has 10% of the market despite being owned by Microsoft and DDG has .5% I am a DDG user and even I recognize they are barely a blip.
  - ApolloFortyNine 2y ago
    You can switch your search to bing in less time then it took to write this message. Your 500 mile analogy simply does not apply.
    - jonhohle 2y ago
      As a business owner you can’t tell all of your present and future customers you’re only going to be in Bing results going forward. This isn’t about what an individual chooses to use. Google is effectively the Yellow pages of the internet. In that era you could take out ads in the newspaper, but no one was looking there when they needed to find a resource they needed now.
shadowgovt 2y ago
Your problem isn't Google, your problem is capitalism and the limited attention economy. If you were in a position where you could just put things online and they may or may not be useful to people, you wouldn't be having this problem. But you're not; you're working for a taskmaster that demands attention or they can't justify their existence. If Google evaporates tomorrow, there's no guarantee that your product gets customers. Indeed, in the absence of Google, most content on the internet is harder to find, not easier. The knob your overseer wants you to turn happens to be attached to Google, but when Google goes away there's going to be a different knob.
- vouaobrasil 2y ago
  I disagree with this. Capitalism may be a problem, but Google's specific technology and size, enabling them to reach people at high-speed, is also a problem. The fact is, capitalism on a small scale (trade with money in local communities) is much less damaging than on a global scale due to the anonymizing effects of scale and the economies of scale being much more efficient at effecting tragedy of the commons. Yes, capitalism is a problem, but it's also true that Google is a problem because Google's scale makes a poor combination with capitalism. Which is worse, the match or the gasoline? Both, if they are used to cause a devastating fire.
- EasyMark 2y ago
  I’ll take capitalism controlling the internet any day over a communist dictatorship who will censor everything that doesn’t support the regime
  - consteval 2y ago
    False dichotomy
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
olalonde 2y ago
They're not. Textbook definition: "A market structure characterized by a single seller, selling a unique product in the market." Google Search has competitors and is not even selling its search product.
- dml2135 2y ago
  > Google Search has competitors and is not even selling its search product. The product is not search, it’s ad placements.
  - olalonde 2y ago
    Your comment specifically called out their search product. If your argument is that they have a monopoly on ads, I don't believe that's true either.
    - dml2135 2y ago
      What I mean is that search is not a product in the sense that you can say “search is free” and not have that be misleading in some way. YOU are the product, being sold to advertisers, and Google search is the channel through which you are sold.
      - olalonde 2y ago
        That's a bit an unconventional take on what free and selling mean, but regardless that wasn't my main point.
- InsideOutSanta 2y ago
  In this context, "selling" can't just mean "exchanging for money", it has to mean something like "exchanging for a valuable consideration." The valuable consideration that you provide in exchange for using Google is your attention on their ads, and your behavioral and personal data that can be sold. And I would say that Google can fairly be called a unique product in the market. They are the default search engine on almost all browsers and operating systems, their mobile phone operating system owns 70% of the global market share, and most of these devices give Google's search engine preferential treatment, their name is synonymous with searching on the web, their market share is over 90%, they have more data on their users than probably any other company and can provide more personalized search results than anyone else, their web index is clearly more complete than e.g. Bing's (if you do a domain-restricted search, Google often finds twice as many results as Bing). It's true that alternatives to Google exist, but Google's overwhelming market dominance makes it imo difficult to argue that they aren't a monopoly in practice.
bentice 2y ago
To exist on the internet you need to pay Google. Google is essentially the government of the open web. The problem is that government like monopolies do arise especially when there are network effects. We need to regulate search and app stores like it is a public utility. Pricing should be dutch auction or something provably fair. 20-30% for in-app purchases is obviously insane when credit cards do 1.5-3.5%. I worry that the government will not do sensible regulations and instead play investment banker and try to create spin off companies.
- Workaccount2 2y ago
  The question then becomes: Are users going to be willing to pay google (or whatever search) now instead? I don't think the vast majority of the internet understands how the business model of the internet works.
  - lmpdev 2y ago
    Not OP but as a public utility it would be paid for through both taxes and usage The actual computational resources required to provide search would be a fraction of Google’s operating costs Added benefit would be pitting private providers against each other so they’re incentivised to provide better outcomes, as opposed to the current decoupling of utility and market position The current situation is immensely wasteful of everyone’s time and resources (Alphabet shareholders aside) It really is a Standard Oil situation, but as it’s just inflaming - but not halting -the global economy, it’s been flying under regulators’ radar until a few years ago No moat is too wide for the flick of sufficiently powerful pens, business models be damned
  - bentice 2y ago
    Let them make profit. We probably should have to pay for traffic and advertisement on the web. But regulate it so that there cannot be price gouging. For instance there are maximum interest chargeable on loans. You should be able to loan money at interest but there is a point where you are just using your power to economically exploit others. Especially if there is no option.
- jonhohle 2y ago

timmg 2y ago

> There has been nothing in my life so disillusioning as working on a Web app for a company that is more or less required to play Google's game. Have you built any iOS apps?

LeonB 2y ago
Ha, well said. Having both of these experiences makes one even more against the tyranny of monopolists.
brookst 2y ago
While true and a fair point, iOS is Apple’s platform in a way that the web is most certainly not Google’s.
- lotsofpulp 2y ago
  I hardly use Google, and I use the internet. DDG/Kagi/ChatGPT/Reddit/HN/etc for searching. Fastmail/myriad order email providers. Openstreetmap/Apple for maps. YouTube and Chrome Remote Desktop are what I use Google for, but those have alternatives too.
  - jonhohle 2y ago
    The concern is if you are developing for the web, how much time do you need to spend appeasing Google to show up in search results and be discoverable. When I was at Amazon the majority of direct product traffic did not come internal search, it came from Google. In some areas they were competitors, Amazon was beholden to Google as the starting point for most customer’s browsing experience.
  - EasyMark 2y ago
    It’s not just monopoly it’s googles abuse. How many times have they been sued successfully and fined by the government for abusing the position as a large corporation, I’d say it’s legion. I wish the government was more vigilant in using their power to kill corporations outright after so many abuses of power
- jonhohle 2y ago
  It’s odd how this is lost on people. Want to develop a game for PlayStation, Sony will need to approve. Want to develop a Facebook app, FB will gatekeep. If you wanted to make apps for the Danger Hiptop, you published through Danger. iOS is Apple’s consolized OS for their own hardware. It’s not a PC platform that anyone can put on whatever device they want. For better or worse.
  - Workaccount2 2y ago
    I think there is a reasonable breaking point though, where the platform becomes so ingrained in society that you are left out of social groups if you don't join. "iPhone Families" is a very real thing that Apple has gone out of it's way to solidify. Or try being an (American) 15 year old kid and get included in group chats with an android phone. It's pretty gross when a mega-corp is so powerful that it can leverage your friends and family against you, forcing you into their walled prison err.. garden.
    - consteval 2y ago
      Personally, I think the breaking point is when the device transitions from "appliance" or niche device to general computer. I think at a time a phone could be considered an appliance. But that's changed, and for many people their smartphone is their only general personal computer.
  - CivBase 2y ago
    When you're a part of a duopoly on a product that is necessary for participating in the modern economy with as much friction as iOS has for switching to the only viable competitor... what makes it so fundamentally different from the web? IMO they can either keep the duopoly and deal with regulation or they can keep full control of their platform. One or the other. Same goes for Android.
    - jonhohle 2y ago
      So if a business mode is successful, regardless of whether it’s actively thwarted competition or acted anticompetitively, it should be regulated? It’s not the web. It’s not a PC. It’s a sandboxed console. > MO they can either keep the duopoly and deal with regulation or they can keep full control of their platform. Then they’ll keep they’re platform and not be regulated ;-) (I know what you meant).
- isodev 2y ago
  Just following this thought then the remedy will be forcing Apple to allow alternative OS and firmware on their devices, allowing consumers to choose what they do with the device hardware they purchased?
  - ineedaj0b 2y ago
    No, it would be buying an android phone
    - isodev 2y ago
      Buying a phone from another vendor is only viable if Apple/Google didn't try to lock you in. Of course we know that's not true - you can't just go elsewhere and that's by design.
  - mouse_ 2y ago
    Ownership and security are at odds. The only remedy would be forcing Apple to allow the owner of the device to run whatever they would like on it, unfortunately this does include malware.
    - nolist_policy 2y ago
      This is a false dilemma thought. The secure solution is to treat every app as malicious and put it in a sandbox where it can not cause harm. See also Android and ChromeOS.
      - CamperBob2 2y ago
        In the broadest sense, an app that "can not cause harm" can't do anything useful. To the industry's dominant players, "causing harm" means empowering the user to venture outside their walled gardens... or even to see outside them. So, no, sandboxing everything in sight isn't a useful solution. Your sandbox will just imprison us all.
  - brookst 2y ago
    I’m not a subscriber to the “if I choose to buy a product, I get to dictate product design decisions for the company” school of thought. Buy it or don’t. If you want X there is no right do demand Y turn into X.
- chipdart 2y ago
  > While true and a fair point, iOS is Apple’s platform in a way that the web is most certainly not Google’s. OP was whining over Google's role in Android. Pointing out Apple's control of iOS, and the fact that iPhone is by far the dominant platform for handhelds, does refute OP's personal assertion.

ApolloFortyNine 2y ago

>Google's "search results" are the textbook definition of a monopolized good/service. Defining a market as a specific search engine's search results is wild. Wouldn't every search engine have a monopoly over it's results? A grocery store monopoly over its shelves? Etc.

Forgeties79 2y ago
When you are the only grocery store for 500mi yes you functionally have a “monopoly over your shelves.”
- lenerdenator 2y ago
  There's Bing and DDG (aka "Bing without tracking").
  - Forgeties79 2y ago
    Bing barely has 10% of the market despite being owned by Microsoft and DDG has .5% I am a DDG user and even I recognize they are barely a blip.
- ApolloFortyNine 2y ago
  You can switch your search to bing in less time then it took to write this message. Your 500 mile analogy simply does not apply.
  - jonhohle 2y ago
    As a business owner you can’t tell all of your present and future customers you’re only going to be in Bing results going forward. This isn’t about what an individual chooses to use. Google is effectively the Yellow pages of the internet. In that era you could take out ads in the newspaper, but no one was looking there when they needed to find a resource they needed now.

shadowgovt 2y ago

Your problem isn't Google, your problem is capitalism and the limited attention economy. If you were in a position where you could just put things online and they may or may not be useful to people, you wouldn't be having this problem. But you're not; you're working for a taskmaster that demands attention or they can't justify their existence. If Google evaporates tomorrow, there's no guarantee that your product gets customers. Indeed, in the absence of Google, most content on the internet is harder to find, not easier. The knob your overseer wants you to turn happens to be attached to Google, but when Google goes away there's going to be a different knob.

vouaobrasil 2y ago
I disagree with this. Capitalism may be a problem, but Google's specific technology and size, enabling them to reach people at high-speed, is also a problem. The fact is, capitalism on a small scale (trade with money in local communities) is much less damaging than on a global scale due to the anonymizing effects of scale and the economies of scale being much more efficient at effecting tragedy of the commons. Yes, capitalism is a problem, but it's also true that Google is a problem because Google's scale makes a poor combination with capitalism. Which is worse, the match or the gasoline? Both, if they are used to cause a devastating fire.
EasyMark 2y ago
I’ll take capitalism controlling the internet any day over a communist dictatorship who will censor everything that doesn’t support the regime
- consteval 2y ago
  False dichotomy
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

olalonde 2y ago

They're not. Textbook definition: "A market structure characterized by a single seller, selling a unique product in the market." Google Search has competitors and is not even selling its search product.

dml2135 2y ago
> Google Search has competitors and is not even selling its search product. The product is not search, it’s ad placements.
- olalonde 2y ago
  Your comment specifically called out their search product. If your argument is that they have a monopoly on ads, I don't believe that's true either.
  - dml2135 2y ago
    What I mean is that search is not a product in the sense that you can say “search is free” and not have that be misleading in some way. YOU are the product, being sold to advertisers, and Google search is the channel through which you are sold.
    - olalonde 2y ago
      That's a bit an unconventional take on what free and selling mean, but regardless that wasn't my main point.
InsideOutSanta 2y ago
In this context, "selling" can't just mean "exchanging for money", it has to mean something like "exchanging for a valuable consideration." The valuable consideration that you provide in exchange for using Google is your attention on their ads, and your behavioral and personal data that can be sold. And I would say that Google can fairly be called a unique product in the market. They are the default search engine on almost all browsers and operating systems, their mobile phone operating system owns 70% of the global market share, and most of these devices give Google's search engine preferential treatment, their name is synonymous with searching on the web, their market share is over 90%, they have more data on their users than probably any other company and can provide more personalized search results than anyone else, their web index is clearly more complete than e.g. Bing's (if you do a domain-restricted search, Google often finds twice as many results as Bing). It's true that alternatives to Google exist, but Google's overwhelming market dominance makes it imo difficult to argue that they aren't a monopoly in practice.

bentice 2y ago

To exist on the internet you need to pay Google. Google is essentially the government of the open web. The problem is that government like monopolies do arise especially when there are network effects. We need to regulate search and app stores like it is a public utility. Pricing should be dutch auction or something provably fair. 20-30% for in-app purchases is obviously insane when credit cards do 1.5-3.5%. I worry that the government will not do sensible regulations and instead play investment banker and try to create spin off companies.

Workaccount2 2y ago
The question then becomes: Are users going to be willing to pay google (or whatever search) now instead? I don't think the vast majority of the internet understands how the business model of the internet works.
- lmpdev 2y ago
  Not OP but as a public utility it would be paid for through both taxes and usage The actual computational resources required to provide search would be a fraction of Google’s operating costs Added benefit would be pitting private providers against each other so they’re incentivised to provide better outcomes, as opposed to the current decoupling of utility and market position The current situation is immensely wasteful of everyone’s time and resources (Alphabet shareholders aside) It really is a Standard Oil situation, but as it’s just inflaming - but not halting -the global economy, it’s been flying under regulators’ radar until a few years ago No moat is too wide for the flick of sufficiently powerful pens, business models be damned
- bentice 2y ago
  Let them make profit. We probably should have to pay for traffic and advertisement on the web. But regulate it so that there cannot be price gouging. For instance there are maximum interest chargeable on loans. You should be able to loan money at interest but there is a point where you are just using your power to economically exploit others. Especially if there is no option.
jonhohle 2y ago