Can someone enlighten me on the deals or other shady methods that Google has made in order to get to the #1 position in search and advertising? I know they have paid Firefox to be the default search engine, I could care less if MS does the same with MSN in IE, no one would use it anyway. Microsoft purposely destroyed other companies to become the top software maker, a big difference between the two companies.

Google has gotten to where they are by being better then everyone else. Remember, they weren’t the first company to come up with a search engine or PPC ad model.

After reading Michael’s post a while back about the search wars not being over, there is nothing to say that another search engine can’t come up and knock Google out in a few years. Don’t like Google? Try something else.

Sandra G said…
Microsoft purposely destroyed other companies to become the top software maker, a big difference between the two companies.

No, wrong. Microsoft used its own resources (its legally owned property) to out muscle its competitor/s in a non-coercive way in a free market. The purposely destructions of private companies is something that is done by coercive forces of the government via the use of unconstitutional anti-trust law.

End of innocence was much earlier than 2008. Google is somehow hurted but still a strange kind of lovemark for me. Because of its long history as a lovemark I guess.

Most monopolies like Standard Oil and Microsoft have offered consumers literally no choice. You couldn’t buy a PC without windows for years unless you built it yourself. In many cities in America there was no other way to get kerosone besides Standard oil. Standard oil also controlled the railroads through secret agreements. There are tons of other search engines and they just suck. google has simply built a better mouse trap. It’s just not the same thing. The firefox default is a joke compared to the secret, anti-competitive agreements that other monopolies have had.

Furthermore, auctions, like ebay are naturally forming monopolies. Since google has turned advertising into an auction, it will inevitably gravitate towards being a monopoly.

if i had to speculate i would guesss microsoft is lobbying to have these anti-competitive charges brought against google.

furthermore, the thing that really gets monopolies busted up is public outcry over price gouging. the general public is not being gouged, google is free to use.

the only people google can gouge are advertisers and content providers. look for consolidation and collective bargaining among them as google consolidates their power.

…still google is the best thing that has happened to the internet

With the value that Google has provided to consumers, and nearly completely on a free un-obtrusive fashion, I don’t think people mind being defaulted to firefox. If its such an issue, you can go download another web browser. Google’s value to consumers is so high because of its founders vision to really help the world http://www.readtheanswer.com/index.php?rta=blog

Michael has been full spead ahead in regard to pointing out roadblocks to the Google-Yahoo deal, calling for the head of Jerry Yang, and in the larger context, talking about Yahoo’s stupidity and incompetence in regard to the Microsoft saga.

It seems like Mike is gunning for Google and Yahoo. There’s been over seven of these articles in the last week along just slamming either the google/yahoo deal or yahoo for snubbing MS.

This is seriously bad blogging, as your bias is showing. If you want to hate google and yahoo, that’s your business, but try not to thinly veil it in analytics and sell it to us as wisdom.

The GOOG/Yahoo! think may or may not go through. I don’t think it’s time to start hating the world’s best search company unless there’s an alternative that is being suppressed.

Microsoft owns the operating system, and integrated IE into it. People have no choice about installing IE–it’s there, and no one installs it on their own. If you don’t want IE, tough. If you want Firefox, you have to go get it like any other application. And because of that, Firefox is free to use whatever other sites and search engines it pleases. Microsoft is limited because of its OS monopoly, which is imposed on 95% of all computer users.

I love Google for they make possible for many to make a living form home. But i wish that their dominant is not that strong.

People fear that this is going to be a huge issue, but I would much rather see yahoo and google together on some form of a partnership than Microsoft taking yahoo into itself. True that anti-trust laws will be a huge factor in and if this plays out, but the test run done 3 months ago proved that this is beneficial to both companies. You can bet money on Microsoft though, that they will try to block this.

Hey Michael here is my advice:

Given that Firefox is an open source software, which means anyone can modify it and redistribute it with the modifications they wanted. Why don’t you get the source, change a couple of lines, replace the name and branding and start giving away free copies of your new CrunchFox browser or whatever other name you want, then you can default the search engine to MS (or any other crappy company you have stocks and want to boost the value of).

Google is the default search on FF not only because Mozilla .org and .com benefits from Google’s investments, but because Google is the current best search engine in the market, otherwise the community would have forked the code already, and would have been working on a branch that has better defaults, just like happened with the Phoenix fork of the Mozilla browser, which resulted in what we now know as Firefox.

It is a free market after all, you get your product on the default installation of a successful open source project mainly by providing the best option, not by forcing it with regulations.

In summary, if you don’t like Firefox default installation, don’t use it and don’t recommend it to anyone. Or start your own fork. Or try to convince the community that maintains the main distribution of the code that introducing an extra and possibly useless clutter in the installation is necessary.

Michael (+ Erick):

Great post. I would be more interested to see how do regulators react to Google’s control of the search business. Consider the following:

1. Microsoft owns 90% of the OS market in Europe. Microsoft want to ship a Media Player or a default Search Engine product as part of their OS. But in Europe they cannot – they have to let the users choose. Otherwise there’s little chance for a competing Media player/Search engine.

2. Google owns 90% of the Search Engine market across Europe. Google wants to ship a new News/Maps/Shopping Review/Book product as part of the search engine. No-one stops them for doing so at the moment. They just bundle that as part of their core product i.e. http://www.google.com. This leaves little chance for a competing news/maps/shopping/books service.

The web is the new OS. Why is their regulation around the 1990’s starting point (the PC OS) but none around the 2000’s starting point (the Search Engine)?

I would be happy to see a TC post about this. If you think the comparison is invalid, I would be happy to hear that, too. Erick loves writing about Google; maybe he should look into this when he’s back from his weekend

Oded

Google is not a monopoly.
A monopoly polishes crap, puts it into a box and sells it forcibly (A good example is vista)

Innocence was lost in 2005 when they IPOed. Before, it was user experience first. Now, it is growth first at any cost.

soon user networks will demand payment or incentives for there time online. welcome to the rise of the “wisdom of users. ” users will demand payment from google for there viewership. thats when the internet really gets interesting. realitylocator.com

64 comments so far on a volatile “what if” situation? What’s next Mike? Writing promos for your late local news? “A certain brand of toothpaste may be killing you, find out which one at 11.”

When you are an 800 lb. gorilla, the easiest solution to all confrontations is to use your weight to your advantage.

Eventually, the 800 lb. gorilla must be constrained to prevent it from destroying everything in it’s path. Even if the gorilla appears to be friendly . . .

Google is pushing the limits and will find out what those limits are. It’s a natural part of the process. No man or company is an island.

Google and Apple have both lasted enough without the FTC acts against them. We all love to hate MS, but seems like Google and Apple are heading that way

How bizarre…

I thouht that avoiding monopolies was all about preventing a given company to have so much control over a market that it could impose unreasonnable prices without compitition to cap them… I don’t really see how that applies to Google’s reversed auction strategy for publicity and free for all services…

Well for those who want to jog Michael’s post whilst viewing the related links, simply jog the following track:

http://www.jogtheweb.com/reade.....rackId=101

Google was innocent in 2007? Innocent the year swallowed up early stage competitors for a fraction of their ultimate worth then allowed them to rot in obscurity while they engineered lesser quality goods at a slower pace? Innocent the year they tried to stifle innovation in areas of online software as a service just to make sure they got all the credit for an entire sandbox? Yikes… if that was innocent then, yeah, the rest of 2008 is really gonna suck!

Google = Conflict. They need to decide if they are a search engine (including a relevance-ad distributor), a development platform provider, or an application service provider. It’s is pitiful how, each day, more and more services rely on tools from Google to communicate, monetize, and lately even host and data-compute their applications… this same company (Google) is “hard” at work engineering a lesser quality product that will come and vanquish the small application relying on them today… it’s a bullshit scheme this wickedly evil company are running over there and more people have got to start calling them out on it.

So as far as “end” of innocence goes? I’m saying that happened as soon as Google stepped out of the realm of search and began it’s rampage of covert web-application genocide. (Very much “pre” circa-2008).

The MS monopoly is far far different than the Google monopoly. The switching cost for a search engine is low. The information used to build it, free. The switching cost for changing operating systems is high both for the individual in terms of learning curve or cost, as well as interoperability, rebuying all applications, corporations having to obtain new licenses and retrain everyone.

The MS monopoly is far more persistent. Better operating systems can’t beat MS. Whereas, if someone created a disruptively better search than Googlel, it won’t be a huge hurdle for anyone to start using it, and like Infoseek, Altavista, Netscape, Lycos, Excite, and other dominant web properties, they could evaporate overnight.

MS has the luxury of resting on an enormous worldwide path dependency for their operating system that compels virtually anyone to have a copy of it for some purpose, at some time in their lives. I use OSX and Linux for years, and I still am forced to boot into MS once in a while.

As for Google branching out, there is nothing evil about it. Is “Gears” evil? Google has been very good for openness on the web.

Your post is dead on. Google is increasingly behaving the way they say they don’t like others to behave. The deal with Yahoo is a dumb move for Google because they are going out of their way to bait and egg on antitrust authorities… a tell tale sign of zero-self-awareness and that they haven’t figured out that acceptable bahavior for a company with market power is very different than for an average competitor.
See my take on the GooHoo deal at: http://www.precursorblog.com/node/784
Scott Cleland
President of Precursor LLC and Chairman of NetCompetition.org which represents broadband interests

“Luke Harvey-Palmer
June 16th, 2008 at 4:36 am
Why does everyone dislike or fear Google?. We live in an open, capitalist economy … Google never had innocence - it is, was, and always will be a successful company doing their best in a system that encourages and rewards such practices … free markets regulate themselves! …”

What angers me about Google is that they’re trying to have it both ways. On the one hand they’re a normal company out to make money, which is great. I’m all for capitalism. But on the other hand they play this holier-than-thou, do-no-evil crypto-socialist “open internet” game.

Google has helped discrediting intellectual property rights. Asking to get paid for content is now considered evil. Everything has to be free with an ad model. Somehow increasingly the only one actually making any money is Google, by selling advertising in other people’s content. Most startups now have no business model other than getting acquired by Google.

It will be hard to repair the damage done without restoring intellectual property rights, including the rights to your own personal/social data. Or perhaps we should push for Google to open source their search technology or open up their ad network to third parties.

Those who voiced against Google above were penalized by Google for Adsense Fraud/Malpractices. Get a Life !

@anonymous

Thanks for the economics lesson - just went back to my text books (and Google) and could not find anything about Candyland?. Is this another land that conspiracy theorists have dreamed up? Just checked my honours degree in economics to make sure it was not issued by the University of Candyland - phew, it wasn’t. Lucky for that, I was starting to believe that the US Government planned September 11, and that George Bush started the Skull and Bones Club at Yale while he was there! Fool.

Jesus, I cannot believe what I am reading here from socialists & communists attitudes/sympathisers on this thread.

I bet 120% that if thugs like Robert Mugabe (Zambabwe) , Fidel Castro (Cuba) , Hugo Chávez (Venezuela) , dear leader Kim Jong-il (North Korea) are reading comments on this thread, they would be delighted. It confirmed to them that capitalism is evil after all, since they see communists & socialists calling for legislators (indirectly) to muzzle the productive of the society such as Google via legislation using the anti-trust law. Such interference from the state legislators is quite damaging & destructive to these private companies.

Here are some of those comments:

Matt said…
They need to decide if they are a search engine (including a relevance-ad distributor), a development platform provider, or an application service provider.

Scott Cleland said…
Google is increasingly behaving the way they say they don’t like others to behave.

Peter Verkooijen said…
What angers me about Google is that they’re trying to have it both ways. On the one hand they’re a normal company out to make money, which is great. I’m all for capitalism. But on the other hand they play this holier-than-thou, do-no-evil crypto-socialist “open internet” game.

Here is a simple message to socialists/communists on this list. Google doesn’t owe you anything at all, not a single cent. Google only serves the interests of its rightful owners, ie, its shareholders. Google is entitle to run its business the way it sees fit. It doesn’t have to play darling to whingers with socialists/communists attitude because the market forces will correct how Google run its business and this is based on pure voluntary action between consumers and Google. There is no such thing as anti-competitive in the free market. There is only a better and worse competitor and until socialists/communists on this list realized this fact, then stop moaning about property of others that is not yours. Remember it is free to use , free not to use it. I bet that commenters with socialists/communists attitude here would be the first one to jump up and down if Google announces that they will start charging for fees for anyone using their search engine. Socialists & communists don’t want to produce, they just want the state to do the nanny on their behalf. Yep that’s right. Socialists/communists like nanny state, because they can’t take responsibility for themselves and that is the reason they require the state to nanny them against evil businesses like Google, after all, Google is giving users a free service which is voluntary to join or not to join.

Don’t try to destroy the American dream that your forefathers had fought for in establishing a great nation. They had a grand vision to protect individual property rights and not to destroy it. Now you have lobbyists, whingers (unproductive people of the society) calling for the destruction of the private property of the productive people & wealth creators of the society such as Google, Microsoft and so forth. If you keep following this path of destruction of private properties (wealth creators economic vehicle), then in a 100 years or so, the US might follow what other former global empires went thru, ie, decline into a ranking of 3rd, 4th, 5th or even lower in terms of economic powerhouse. Your grandchildren will look up to China, with its many Microsoft-type & Google-type entrepreneurs of the day and wish, how can we be innovative like those wealth creators in China? Your grand children wouldn’t know that the US decline was solely the result of disrespecting private property rights over a hundred year period earlier, ie, the continual destruction of the private properties of the entrepreneurs & wealth creators.

Here is a message to Socialists/communists here. Start producing yourself with a product that can compete with Google, and stop moaning about how other property owners are running the business legitimately.

Good article Michael but I think Google lost its innocence a long time ago and people are finally starting to really notice the fact…

no one cried when they savaged the analytics industry….

not enough people screamed when they used min bids to supposedly get rid of arbitragers at the expense of all advertisers….

not enough complained about the use of Quality Scores for PPC which was another way of them raising the min bids…

I am not surprised, “Google was never innocent”. They eat the forbidden apple long back. It is just that you are reading out the story from Bible, but thanks anyway to tell the story to everyone.

My organization being a Google AdWord based advertiser in Indian market for quite sometime now (3 years on a row now), what we have seen is this so called democracy of advertising cost in Google platform finally hurts. There is hardly any optimization strategy works well, on top of that they make it more moronic by providing automated optimisation button which lazy SEM analysts just press without even understanding the trap.

You don’t have much flexibility anyway, it is not a consumers’ market, it is a supplier market, where you don’t have a choice. Google is like T model Ford, and we all need a car.

Over last year our cost of acquisition has gone up almost double and Google is no more a platform for small players like us. It is clearly yet another platform the big guys can use.

@Falafulu Fisi, how am I suddenly a socialist/communist?!

My point was that Google basically hasn’t produced much since developing a pretty good search engine. Google gets rich off selling advertising in other peoples content, thanks to crypto-socialist internet dogma that has discredited the concept of intellectual property.

The web 2.0 business model relies way too much on free stuff with advertising and increasingly the only one benefiting or making any money is Google.

This whole argument is insane!!!

DEFINITION: Last I checked, a monopoly occurs when consumers have limited access to a variety of products, or limitation of their access to a specific product. A large “marketshare” doesn’t mean a monopoly, though a monopoly usually indicates a large “marketshare.” Having the only product in a market doesn’t make a monopoly (i.e. adsense)

- Google is NOT a monopoly. Google doesn’t “control” anything. Consumers do NOT have limited access to other search engines. Consumers are not in any way limited only to access of Google.
- Microsoft IS a monopoly. Microsoft does “control” everything when every consumer level computer I try to buy comes with a certain Microsoft operating system pre-installed with IE.
- Firefox can do whatever they want, because Mozilla is NOT a monopoly.
- IE can’t do whatever they want, because Microsoft IS a monopoly!!!

And last, Microsoft is an operating system with a built in web browser (IE) while GOOGLE is simply a website that you need a browser for.

Its comparing apples to oranges.

I think that google is not the problem - you have the coice - use another SE if you like - you`ll perhaps find a better one