Everyone Loves Google, Until It’s Too Big

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/22/business/22digi.html

by peter123 • 17 years ago

12 9 17 years ago

vaksel• 17 years ago

we need viable alternatives, simply for the fact that without competition Google would have no reason to innovate.

patio11• 17 years ago

I think it is a bit more pressing than that. They haven't stopped innovating, but their pricing for AdWords is maddeningly non-transparent (its an auction, except when Google decides its not an auction) and only constrained by the availability of other viable contextual ad platforms. Of which there are, essentially, none.

Anyone who disagrees with this assessment of Microsoft and Yahoo's offerings should be sentenced to actually using the things. The interfaces are garbage, the traffic is low-quality, and most damning of all there just isn't enough of it to make dealing with the other headaches a viable use of your time. Google can routinely find $600 worth of inventory for me in a month, Microsoft struggles to find $30 -- and I'm in about the most non-technical niche you could imagine using a search engine.

dotcoma• 17 years ago

agree. but I'm not sure that merging Yahoo! Search and Live Search would be much of an improvement...

cdibona• 17 years ago

Not speaking for Google, but I'd also point out that newcomers and competitors can experiment with search (think ranking, ui, etc) in very interesting ways. For all the teasing that cuil received, the did try something pretty interesting with the ui, for instance.

I also know that competing on search is very difficult and expensive, given the computational demands, which is why new, good quality competitors is hard for us to come by.

mcarlin• 17 years ago

I think a much bigger problem is Wikipedia. It's a much quieter but much stronger monopoly, and the people who run it are known to be prone to cliques, drama and manipulation. Google is professional, and for the time being, not dangerous. Wikipedia is still somewhat unprofessional, and is rapidly becoming the world's source for encyclopedic knowledge.

dimitar• 17 years ago

If it gets too bad it can be simply forked. And see Wikipedia getting better, not worse.

jamesbritt• 17 years ago

"It's a much quieter but much stronger monopoly"

How is it a monopoly?

herval• 17 years ago

everybody I know always says wikipedia is a non-trustworthy source of encyclopedic information (unless verifiable in some other source). And plus there are several wikipedias out there, it is open source - and it doesn't even make 1/1000 of the money GOOG does! in what sense is it a monopoly?

scorpioxy• 17 years ago

I don't know how useful it is to worry about this. Isn't this what happened to Yahoo in the late-90s, early 2k?

The market will always respond to correct abnormalities. As in, when Google stops innovating, somebody else will.

Everyone Loves Google, Until It’s Too Big

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