Google's Competitors Falsely Claim Google Dominates Because It Was 'First'

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110921/14190816043/how-quickly-we-forget-googles-competitors-falsely-claim-google-dominates-because-it-was-first.shtml

by nextparadigms • 15 years ago

113 56 15 years ago

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PaulHoule• 15 years ago

It was the first one that didn't suck and it was the first one that made money.

Infoseek was the first search engine I saw. They were thinking of charging people for subscriptions.

Altavista came out with a bigger and fresher index, for a year or two they were the best, but they were being totally rolled by spammers, just like the others.

Then there was Google, which was spam resistant and much more relevant than the competition. Then Google figured out how to make money and nobody's caught up since.

Arguably Bing "doesn't suck" but it doesn't make money.

boredguy8• 15 years ago

"It was the first one that didn't suck"

That's also untrue. I remember being viscerally mad at Yahoo for moving away from Inktomi because Inktomi results were much better for what I searched for...or I had gotten my searches to work for Inktomi. Who cares? Eventually, Google got better, and I started using them.

I use a lot of Google services, but when I search the web I use Google because it works. Searches have very little traction. The only thing it takes to move my searches elsewhere is consistently better results. All it takes for me to try a new search engine is Google not working well a few more times a month.

InclinedPlane• 15 years ago

Lycos was ok in the super early days but as the amount of content increased a simple search engine was no longer effective. Inktomi was great because it didn't have portal-bloat and it had pretty high quality results. But when google came around it blew everyone out of the water because not only were the results generally of higher quality but it was enormously faster. Combined with a smart datacenter strategy and a smart advertising strategy they dominated the market with ease.

Edit: To follow up, google was able to deliver better results (due to pagerank) faster (due to map/reduce and sharding) cheaper (due to highly automated data centers filled with commodity hardware). This combination set them up for dominance, the ability to generate better, more context appropriate ads (due to pagerank, map/reduce, etc, etc. and an effectively massive excess of processing power per search) and the ability to be profitable at a much lower CPM for ads (due to cheaper operations) was what allowed them to become a multi-billion dollar company and leave all other search companies in the dust.

bad_user• 15 years ago

Before using Google, I have been using both Altavista and Yahoo for searches. The results from those older search engines really sucked for me.

I remember sitting at a local Internet Cafe, frustrated that I wasn't finding what I searched for. The I saw somebody using Google and thought I should give it a try.

The difference that I experienced with Google was humongous, and it made an instant convert out of me, even though in general I'm pretty conservative about throwing away tools that work. Really, it wasn't even funny how better Google was.

This was happening in 2001.

zobzu2• 15 years ago

To be honest Google results start to have a lot of spam in them. Even the US results. In the past, US results were rather clear, and localized ones for most other countries were .. well.. not very good.

Bing doesn't really do better, but that's the state of the engines right now anyway.

If you look for something specific, Google dumbs it out too. In the early days it didn't do that and you could search for good stuff. Now you get what everyone gets, whatever you're typing.

fhars• 15 years ago

Sometimes it helps to put a plus in front of every search term, that does at least prevent google from replacing the most specific term of your query with the least specific misspelling. That is especially helpful for programming terms that are minor variations of human language terms, just compare the searches

  scala hlist

and

  +scala +hlist

Thw first doesn't contain a single result that is relevant to the query.

5hoom• 15 years ago

Exactly.

In the 90's I remember using Lycos, Altavista, HotBot, AskJeeves and others which have faded from my memory. Then along came this new 'google' search engine & I never went back to the others.

I still have a note scribbled on an old address book (the dead tree kind) saying "www.google.com - it's a new search engine".

It was certainly not 'the first'. Just the first really good one.

colechristensen• 15 years ago

Highway 61 was the greatest! It combined results from several of the popular engines and provided the best results until google came along.

http://web.archive.org/web/19980205031323/http://www.highway... /nostalgia

ohyes• 15 years ago

My favorite was Dogpile. edit: it still exists. I still like dogpile.

ori_b• 15 years ago

> It was the first one that didn't suck and it was the first one that made money.

That's a bit of a tautology. "It dominates because it was the first to produce a dominant product."

kevingadd• 15 years ago

When people testify before congress like this, is it under oath? Lying to congress should be considered perjury.

staunch2• 15 years ago

It is under oath. This is not the kind of thing that should be prosecuted. Jeez.

wpietri2• 15 years ago

Why not? A paid mouthpiece saying something false in order to mislead Congress into doing what his paymasters want seems like a serious issue to me.

staunch2• 15 years ago

By "got there first" he could quite likely mean that they were the first to achieve search market domination, which is entirely true.

felipemnoa2• 15 years ago

Is there any indication that that is what he meant?

ohashi• 15 years ago

It seems like a pretty ridiculous definition considering the words chosen. Getting there first implies doing something first. Google didn't invent search nor did it invent the business model of PPC (GoTo/Overture did it - who were bought by YAHOO).

anamax• 15 years ago

> he could quite likely mean that [google was] the first to achieve search market domination, which is entirely true.

What definition of "search market domination" are we using such that that is true?

I'm pretty sure that Altavista had a huge market share at its peak and I suspect that it wasn't the first one to have a comparable share.

jinushaun• 15 years ago

First?! Geez louise, I still remember the day when I first heard about Google while talking to a computer nerd friend of mine over AIM. We were probably discussing an article on Slashdot. I still remember the days when I was constantly evangelising the awesomeness of Google and secretly changing the default home page for everyone else in my family. Good riddance Yahoo, Infoseek, Lycos and Altavista. Good riddance sneaky sponsored search results.

mbesto4• 15 years ago

> Being first to market does grant a significant advantage.

This was the first comment I saw on the article and I immediately began to cringe. This is so dead WRONG! For the life of me I can't find the reference but I believe their is a book that talks solely how being first in a market is a massive myth.

kenjackson4• 15 years ago

It can be a big advantage. In a commodity market, which search has become, it's huge. And the other type of market is one with huge network effects. Beating Facebook will be hard regardless of your feature set.

taeric• 15 years ago

You realize that Facebook was hardly first into this market, right?

Same with Google.

trevelyan3• 15 years ago

Not intended to come across as aggressive, but have you started a business? How about one that competes with entrenched players in an existing space? Or one that appears on page seven or eight in Google for relevant search queries when your competitors are on page one?

There is a reason most YC companies are trying to disrupt markets rather than compete head-on-head with existing business models. Because while it isn't impossible to break into markets dominated by competitors, it is much harder and you are at a severe disadvantage. How do you reach consumers? How do you build brand awareness? How do you advertise profitably? And why should the NYT or RWW or anyone write about your business when there is already a bigger story out there?

There are ways around these problems, but they all involve tradeoffs that work against small startups and that take time and money to overcome. Blogging heavily to try to overcome SEO problems will take at least 12 months in the best case to see any results and gets less effective every year, while requiring quite a bit of work up-front that does not drive revenue. Viral loops can take time to function effectively in the real world. And meanwhile you have to be building something that will drive revenue eventually in addition to addressing user concerns, iterating and improving your product.

Your best bet is often just to produce something really good and aim for word-of-mouth. But even in this case, your speed of growth will be much slower than initial entrants ceteris paribus, and you'll often need to compete by giving more stuff away for free. If Google didn't have VC funding they wouldn't have been able to spurn the sponsored placements that their competitors used and would have ended up with an internal marketing department. Would their product have seemed so much different/better then? So ask yourself -- can you give away your product for free for four or five years while you find a better way to make money (AdSense)? And do you really have an advantage in this search compared to your profitable competitors who are also looking to innovate and improve their products, and who also have non-trivial budgets to back their development efforts?

spc476• 15 years ago

Microsoft made a killing by being second to market, except maybe for BASIC when they started. Operating systems, second (or third even). Applications? Second. Graphical interfaces? Second (and I remember when Microsoft was the David to Apple's Goliath in the "Look-and-Feel Lawsuits" of the mid-80s). There's not much Microsoft was first at.

mbesto4• 15 years ago

Not aggressive at all. Yes, I've started two actually (completely boot strapped mind you). One was a creative agency (huge market saturation) and one that is a niche social network (another huge market saturation). I haven't technically started my third, but I am essentially responsible for growing a consulting practice right now.

>There is a reason most YC companies are trying to disrupt markets rather than compete head-on-head with existing business models.

I also think the reason most YC companies disrupt markets is because they are generally younger and less experienced entrepreneurs who have little to no market network. And in many cases either sell B2C or sell to B2B to the same tech companies that sell B2C. Many small businesses (the one I worked for currently) are created by individuals who have massively entrenched business networks. The practice I currently am growing has gone from 3 people to 10 by the end of the year. We compete with IBM, Accenture, Capgemini, etc. in the professional services industry. We do ZERO SEO or generate word-of-mouth. Are we disrupting a massive services industry market? Yes.

Honestly I feel like you've gone off on a little tangent here about my original point. While you've raised many wonderful and valid points (that I don't have the time to give my answer) it doesn't negate the fact that being first really doesn't mean anything other than "I learned a lot". Ideally I want to be third or fourth, so that way I can just take all of the painful (read->expensive) learning experiences that the first guy did when trying to capture his product/market fit and just run off from there.

Categorically, let's look at some successful companies/products - Apple's iPad/iPod/iPhone - not first / Google's search - not first / Ford's Automobile - not first / Reddit - not first / Microsoft Office - not first

Being first as a qualifier for success is a myth. Doing it RIGHT first will make you successful.

felipemnoa2• 15 years ago

Wow, the arguments as to why google is a monopoly are almost surreal. It seems that the main argument is that they have a better/popular product and hence they should be punished for that. Whomever is pulling the strings from behind is really playing dirty. I hope it comes back to bite them in the ass big time.

This whole thing looks too much like a witch hunt.

aristus4• 15 years ago

You are offended because Google is being held to a different standard, and you are right. That's the whole point. Monopolies are held to a different standard. This exercise is about determining whether a) Google enjoys a monopoly and b) has abused it to the detriment of competition. The nature of this process is ugly, and everyone involved is self-interested. But I don't think it is a "witch hunt".

The question is not whether Google does good work, or that its search engine is popular on its own brand & merit. It does and it is. The question is whether Google is using its dominance in one area (telling people where things are) to gain dominance in other areas (telling people to use its products over others).

Even if Google's non-search products are objectively better, it can be a bad thing in the long run as the next generation of competitors are locked out by Google's dominance in search.

Defenses like "competition is one click away" are disingenuous, in my opinion. Clicks follow a power-law distribution. But I don't know what the right answer is. This might all be sour grapes. That's what the hearings and investigation are supposed to reveal.

yoyar2• 15 years ago

So, Google does a bunch of good work and people choose to use their service. The US is bankrupt and the economy is screwed. And the congress is spending time persecuting a successful company. BTW, Google isn't the only one. See: Gibson guitars. It doesn't surprise me that people don't want to do business in the US anymore.

magicalist• 15 years ago

> Even if Google's non-search products are objectively better, it can be a bad thing in the long run as the next generation of competitors are locked out by Google's dominance in search.

The problem is in how you try to fix this. You could just as easily end up hobbling google with nothing to show for it but enabling the last generation of middlemen to stick around even longer.

(Nextag and Expedia come to mind...)

> That's what the hearings and investigation are supposed to reveal.

Here's hoping. These proceedings aren't big on subtlety, so unless there's a smoking gun, I'm expecting mostly innuendo and posturing from everybody.

zobzu2• 15 years ago

Actually a monopoly starts by having the better and popular product. Then you have 95%+ of the market. Then you're a monopoly (depending on countries it can be anywhere from 90 to 99.99% I guess).

Monopoly does not mean bad product. It means having nearly ALL the market share.

yoyar2• 15 years ago

And if monopoly means the most number of people choose to use your product because you've produced the best product at the lowest price, then what exactly is wrong with that?

In actuality, there are far more heinous monopolies created by way of gov't regulation than in any other way. Massive regulation is an advantage to bigger dominant companies because it creates large barriers to entry into a market. Some companies lobby for more regulations because it helps them to ensure that others cannot enter the market.

Otherwise, smaller more nimble companies would come along and undercut the dominant company. This is how capitalism is meant to work but in these days or massive government interference in the economy things don't work this way anymore.

llambda• 15 years ago

The argument as framed in yesterday's hearing is that Google is dominate in search and maybe some other industries as well, such as mobile search and mobile operating systems.

Google's competitors have asserted that Google is using this dominance to promote its own products unfairly and steal ideas and information from its competitors, e.g. Yelp's assertions of data theft where Google Places is concerned.

I must have missed this whole "first" argument. In any case if you review the testimony I think you'll find the majority relates to the argument that Google is dominate and abusive. This may or may not constitute a monopoly.

The contrasting argument seems to be that there's no lock-in which apparently is a necessary facet of monopoly although it's worth noting no one but Google seems entirely convinced of that. It seems that if you're unfairly promoting yourself and there's no serious competition, it might be grounds for some sort of injunction.

Maybe the strongest argument against Google's dominance is that such a dominance coupled with self-promotion or the power to shut out competitors makes the barrier to entry into these industries very difficult.

itswindy2• 15 years ago

That's besides the point, even if the writer is 112% correct. What you do with the power you have now, no matter how you got it matters. But advertising based search engines are biased, they will want you to click on ads and will favor their partners (brands.)

Larry and Sergey were right, it's a shame they fell for a few $billion more:

"Currently, the predominant business model for commercial search engines is advertising. The goals of the advertising business model do not always correspond to providing quality search to users."

"But less blatant bias are likely to be tolerated by the market. For example, a search engine could add a small factor to search results from "friendly" companies, and subtract a factor from results from competitors. This type of bias is very difficult to detect but could still have a significant effect on the market. Furthermore, advertising income often provides an incentive to provide poor quality search results."

itswindy2• 15 years ago

For those that didn't notice, this is from Larry and Sergey's original PageRank paper http://infolab.stanford.edu/~backrub/google.html , before Eric Schmidt showed up as the "adult." Google is now the largest advertiser on earth.

I agree 100% with them here!

jpalomaki• 15 years ago

"They dominate just because they got there first"

An argument quite often used by those who can't compete on the same level.

Google is leading not because they were the first, but because they serve their customers well and continue to evolve. Go to the Google blogs and you will see great examples about how they spend lot of time trying to understand what users are meaning with their queries and refining the search to provide more relevant results.

j_col• 15 years ago

Using their search home page recently to promote their new social network, for example? Pretty hard to compete with that kind of marketing coverage if you were trying to launch your own social network...

Google's Competitors Falsely Claim Google Dominates Because It Was 'First'

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