Comment by s3r3nity | Hacker News Reader

Comment by s3r3nity | Hacker News Reader

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> Why does Google get screwed after the enormous investment they made (with time and money) to index pages on the internet?

If that was _all_ they did for the past 20 years to get to where they are today, there wouldn't be any problem. The issue is when you leverage this market gain to punish competitors and expand into spaces at below cost (read: negative profits) to wipe out competitors and gain footholds. See examples regarding: Maps (Mapquest), reviews / answer boxes (Yelp), among others.

As a parallel example: Amazon reinvested profits to near 0 margins in their core business for years so that they could legally gain market share without resorting to anticompetitive behavior.* That's why you don't see similar breakup dialog against Amazon: they don't use this market dominance as leverage to own other markets in the same way Google has done. (Now, if they had done this for, say, boosting market share for AWS, then it _would_ be problematic.)

[*] There have been some examples pointed out regarding using third-party seller data in nefarious ways, but as of current evidence and testimony those examples have been so limited that the impact to market share are virtually nil to marginal at best.

Google Maps beat Mapquest because it was so much better.

You could say Apple engages in a similar anti-competitive tactic by preloading all iPhones with Apple Maps. Yet, Google Maps is still used far more by iOS users than Apple Maps even though they have to manually download it. Why? Because it is a much better product.

I'm not saying the big tech companies don't use their position in the market to promote their products, they obviously do, but whether or not this constitutes as anti-competitive behavior, I don't think it does.

Now if Apple or Google were to prevent users from installing Google Maps, or crippling it for the sole purpose of degrading its user experience, then that would be anti-competitive behavior in my eyes. Sure, there have been disputes between Apple and app makers, but when you dig into the details of these stories, it isn't as cut and dry as some lead you to believe.

I think using Mapquest and Yelp as examples harms your argument.

Mapquest and google maps are fundamentally different products. Google maps is a geo database that happens to also give good driving directions. Mapquest just gave people directions. A better example would be google's Waze acquisition, but even that one is not very comparable.

Yelp is basically a protection racket whose sole purpose is to squeeze money from small single location restaurants. They actively harm their customers by promoting reviews based on whether or not you pay them. They are a modern day BBB

If one views Google's market as information-organization, then Google has never left its market niche.

Amazon absolutely uses its "flywheels" to dominate other markets. UPS and FedEx are presently facing a competitor with a trillion-dollar market cap, several cash-machine businesses, a decade-scale investing strategy, and a "your margin is my opportunity" focus. Through tenacity and bankroll, Amazon can enter and compete in new markets in ways few existing market participants can oppose.

Indeed, I suspect that Amazon has begun to corner the market on long-term investors, too. Why risk investing in a smaller company that intends to duplicate Amazon's strategy when one could, instead, invest in the original zero-margin-so-we-can-take-over-the-world behemoth with a track-record of success?

It's not regulations we need, it is better education. Especially skeptical thinking.

No one would expect Google to not suppress search results that harms its business. It is called capitalism.

And internet citizens should know that and actively make use of competing offers.

It's like going to a Honda car dealer and expecting to get offered the best deal on a Toyota.

>It's not regulations we need, it is better education. Especially skeptical thinking.

As someone who is pretty much exclusively against regulation - I agree with you. However regulation to ensure competitive markets is totally appropriate for government responsibility.

>No one would expect Google to not suppress search results that harms its business. It is called capitalism.

This is fine if Google were some upstart or new entry to the market. Example: Bing has done this for years with promoting its own products / services like Office 365 in search results. The issue comes when you own a _massive_ share of the market, then in the eyes of the law it becomes anticompetitive.

> It's like going to a Honda car dealer and expecting to get offered the best deal on a Toyota.

Not quite an apt comparison, as the car market is very competitive, and Honda / Toyota only have ~7-10% market share within the US, respectively. So in your example, YES it would be dumb to assume that. However if Honda had 95% market share and therefore could undercut any price Toyota offered by taking negative profits in the short-term, then it would absolutely be problematic.

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