Comment by blub | Hacker News Reader

Comment by blub | Hacker News Reader

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I don't think that you are right at all.

First you said that Google just continued with free services. This is incorrect: Navigation was not free and they severely crippled the paid navigation market.

Quality e-mail was not free. A quality office suite was not free. And it still isn't, because Google has failed so far to provide an alternative to MS Office, but they're trying alright!

I do applaud initiatives of transparency such as publishing takedown requests, but income sources are a very powerful influence in a company. Decisions that benefit ads income surely get a priority boost or better funding. I'm not saying that Google is evil or good - this is simplistic and stupid - but a corporation is a corporation.

I don't use Apple products, and I don't care much what Apple does, but at least they're not hypocrites and admit that they want your money. On the other hand Google is all "free" and "open" according to their corporate talk. Speaking of Apple, they ARE a premium brand. You're probably wealthy enough not to care that you pay 2000EUR on a laptop, but most people can't afford to do that.

Finally, Android is a story about the Linux kernel with a Java user space on top. Lots of products have Linux kernels, I don't see why it's such a big deal.

> A quality office suite was not free.

I'm holding my nose as I type this, but for the vast majority of non-power users, OpenOffice is more than adequate.

I agree, I only switch to excel from time to time to use its add-ons. I think there are better and easier to use presentation software for the non-power users online.

It is adequate. If I had to pay the full price for Office I probably wouldn't get it, but through BizSpark I was able to get it for free and OO just can't compete. Additonally, MS offers healthy discounts for home versions, students and so on, most of the time you don't have to pay the full price.

My parents use OO though.

First you said that Google just continued with free services. This is incorrect: Navigation was not free and they severely crippled the paid navigation market.

Google Navigation is on Android, a paid add-on that providers add to products that you pay for. There is nothing free about it.

Quality e-mail was not free. A quality office suite was not free. And it still isn't, because Google has failed so far to provide an alternative to MS Office, but they're trying alright!

No one paid for consumer email -- it was long a free, ad-supported market via options like Hotmail. Adding weasel words like "quality" to disclaim some exception doesn't make that any less true. OpenOffice is entirely free, and is a huge superset of the limited features Google offers.

But even then, the "free" Google office functionality is very limited. Businesses pay for business plans.

Speaking of Apple, they ARE a premium brand.

Most of the buyers of Apple are buying iPods and iMacs and iTVs and iPads, all fantastic values. The people buying Apple laptops are usually developers targeting the first set of buyers.

GM sells the Corvette CR1. They still aren't a premium maker.

Well, my reply was not well thought out and I apologize. I latched onto the "free" word when instead I should have focused on the real issue that bothers me: commoditizing the competition.

E-mail was free, but you got a crap service and ads to boot, it was worth it to get a paid account. Now, for most people GMail would be fine, Google commoditized the e-mail market. They are trying the same thing with the Office market, but they are not succeeding because it's much harder to beat MS Office at its own game, as OO has found.

The bottom line is that when Google enters a market you can bet that they'll make the product free (and beta of course) and then compete with the help of their web ads monopoly. I don't think that's what is best for the tech market and neither it is good for us small entrepreneurs. The last thing I want to do is put ads into my apps, but what choice will I have if Google drives the market to free-with-ads as it has done in certain cases?

P.S: I'm pretty sure that you can use Google Maps for navigation, I have seen at least two people do it with Nokia keyboard phones. You could create a route and it showed where you are on that route.

I think it would also be fair to call Apple a premium brand in certain niches and a value brand in others. Although as you've noticed the premium-ness from iPhone/Macbook tends to rub onto the other products in people minds and when it comes to quality.

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