This is a very ungrateful and childish perspective. It assumes that these things exist out of thin air rather than things google has created. Products don’t just appear, they’re built. Nothing is stopping someone from usurping google. Ever hear of oracle, intel, xerox, blackberry or Microsoft?
Almost all the things in this list were acquired from someone else that built them, rebranded, and then given away for free, taking much of the money out of the market that allowed that product to be built. Without Google giving away the one winner they chose to acquire, you'd have options again.
I built my free web stats service in 2004 because I couldn't afford an Urchin license. Google bought Urchin Live and rebranded it as Google Analytics, and gave it away for free. My service barely pays for itself 20+ years later, but I'm still here and would have an offering for that market on day one that Google Analytics shut down. So would dozens of others.
> Almost all the things in this list were acquired from someone else that built them, rebranded, and then given away for free
Nearly everything that was acquired was a) already free, and b) built (and given away for free) in hopes that someone like Google would acquire them.
If you look at most startups, their exit strategy is acquisition. Some would live to IPO, but that is a much tougher road.
It could be argued that IPO is a less likely exit strategy because of Google’s and others’ position, but I think it’s disingenuous to imply that startups (that are already giving away their products for free) are getting acquired as a last resort.
I don’t think so, at least, it’s not their main motivation.
For most, I imagine the VC fueled free period is to lock up customers and increase you have their sensitive data, you start making moves so you can start to charge them, usually a fairly hefty sum. It’s a classic lock in strategy.
Gmail is the only product you listed that Google started itself.
Google Maps was built on the acquisitions of Where 2 Technologies, Keyhole and ZipDash.
Chrome is based on WebKit, built at Apple.
Waymo's hardware came from the acquisition of 510 Systems, and the software came from the acquihiring of the team that developed Stanford's self-driving cars for the 2005 and 2007 DARPA challenges, who brought their code with them.
It's a more sophisticated perspective than you're giving it credit for.
They're not disputing that google has provided all these services, they're arguing that google's ability to subsidize them prevents market solutions for these same problems being produced.
The internet is, in this view, somewhat of a planned economy with Google as the central planning committee. You get google's maps and google's docs and google's search, rather than a maps marketplace, a docs marketplace, and a search marketplace.
Google is able to enforce this on the market because it holds a unique position where it can extract a significant amount of the value generated in the internet economy in 'ad taxes'.
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I’d argue the regulatory unit ought to be temporary while enforcement is ongoing. Permanent organizations are just as ineffective. They did nothing to protect our food supply from ingredients banned in other countries. They did nothing to stop microplastics from taking over the world.
So exactly what are they good for while sitting around pontificating for years on end?
You’re arguing these orgs should have full support and backing of the government to exert total control (“do something about microplastics” and “banning specific imports”) but because we either failed to give them or they failed to use such powers (“did nothing to stop microplastics”) that we should remove all of their power and backing?
Look, I’m all for addressing plastics and unhealthy foods, but is that really the outcome you’re predicting from the organization being discussed and the people running it?
Their words and past actions lead me to believe they are the “pro plastics” “pro unhealthy foods” people, and their effort, rather than some altruistic motivation you ascribe them, is in fact to remove the last vestiges of guardrails, however weak and inept, against them promoting those sorts of things to an even greater degree.
Don't let perfect be the enemy of good. We have the safest food supply in the entire history of humanity and there still improvements to go, but just removing all that progress because it wasn't perfect seems insane to me.
You want more things banned? Removing all existing regulations will not get you there.
Sorry, I didn't mean to remove regulations. I meant that maybe the regulatory side of the agencies should meet as needed with enforcement being the thing that is perpetual.
Generally the regulatory side is made up of scientists and data analysis folks that build data to back regulatory actions and ensure they're working as intended. How do you envision the regulatory side working? Wait for congress to say, "Hey, look into this?" and then spin up a few thousand temps to crunch numbers and figure out a action? Often times it takes years to build a regulatory stance. If so, how do you forsee holding actions accountable if there isn't a persistent level of folks validating areas of concern across the nation?
I totally understand that the government feels bloated and we could cut costs in plenty of areas, but I think it's way more effective to apoint people into leadership positions that can take a real deep look at things and actually cut what makes sense. Any sort of rapid deep cuts is only going to harm us as a society and likely not actually save that much money. No matter how much money you saved, when you spin up something new that is basically starting from scratch, you're going to spend way more then just fixing what exists.
I think it's the classic coder's dilemma, The code's shit, do I refactor it in place or do I replace it from scratch. Any small or even medium sized project, replacing it from scratch could be the right thing to do, but when you get into large projects, replacing it is just not the right decision if you're trying to save money.
While true, the larger the ship, the more difficult it is to turn. I think the idea is that for every salaried individual, you have support staff, equipment, benefits, etc that come along with them. It’s also another cog in the chain of work that needs to be done.
For example, there are at least 1200 positions that need to be confirmed. It can take half the presidency to staff a full cabinet. I think we can agree that’s excessive.
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You’re wrong, it falls under some minority belief. Even the president of France said last year “we’re living the end of abundance” and he’s a liberal productivist. Abundance is clearly at most a target of healthy minority within a non heathy society.
I don't know if this was intentional on your part, but that Macron quote appears to be grossly out of context: he said it in the context of an expected difficult winter due to the war in Ukraine and an ongoing drought in Europe[1]. He ties it more broadly into consumer changes that will need to happen as part of climate change, but he's not talking about an end to the kind of baseline abundance that citizens of modern developed countries expect (around competing products in their stores, etc.).
(And in case it isn't clear: I'm entirely for reducing society's unnecessary forms of consumption, especially when it comes to personal modes of transit, wasteful packaging, and unsustainable residential patterns. But abundance is an independent variable.)
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