Google As The Next Microsoft?

theodp writes "In this week's missive, Robert X. Cringely argues that Google is starting to look a bit like Microsoft. The search giant is learning too well from the master, says Cringely, noting that Google's launch of Goog-411 after taking a long look at investing in or acquiring Free411.com under an NDA is straight out of an old Microsoft playbook. Cringely goes on to note that Google has a problem with algorithmic optimization gone mad (seconded by Newsweek), which is wreaking havoc on some AdWords customers who may find themselves out of business before they can get Google to do the right thing. Cringely concedes that Google's inability to follow through because of IT failings may not have been learned from Microsoft — it may just be an inevitable part of having an IT monopoly."

A monopoly?

Google has anything but a monopoly. The search business can easily go to an engine that performs better. Google has most of the market share because they are quite simply the best at performing searches.

Microsoft on the other hand plays in a completely different arena. Switching from one OS to another is nearly impossible for many users and at least difficult for most.

No, Google has a long way to go before they become anything like Microsoft, no matter what their tactics may appear like.

Re:Let me fix this for you.

Nah, I think his original statement more accurately conveyed what he meant.

Re:Let me fix this for you.

because monopolies don't naturally exist for a long period of time

Why do we have anti-monopoly laws again? Oh right, the market doesn't fix everything.

just like Microsoft has/had most of the market share because they are quite simply the best at offering OS users the compatibility and efficiency and reduced learning curve that they desire

Reality distortion field detected...

one that is quickly going the way of the do-do

Wishful thinking.

only because the people who spend time pretending that Microsoft has a temporary monopoly have forgotten about IBM, Compaq, Ford, and all the previous monopoly fears that were destroyed by competition. In reality, the future of the OS has Microsoft greatly scared of what likely will be a return to a client-server environment, the same environment that Microsoft temporarily destroyed because people wanted power on the desktop, and now they want power in an interactive environment.

Who the hell forgot? WTF is your definition of temporary, and why should consumers suffer THAT long? You're confusing the definition of a monopoly with 'people abusing monopolies.'
Fuck, that's like saying slavery was a temporary social imbalance, but "the market works" so we should have waited until slavery was 'naturally' socially unacceptable, or nobody needed cotton & tobacco anymore.
Lets just overlook the whole damned problem because in time it will iron itself out? Fuck you.

Abusive monopolies deserve to be cut to pieces, PERIOD.

There are no monopolies in the long run, regardless of how slow government is to react

OK, listen. Monopolies aren't the problem. It's when a monopoly BECOMES a problem, that WE have a problem.

Give it time, and the entire sphere of influence will return to its roots in shared resources. All we need is the bandwidth.

Jesus, some companies might not WANT that to ever happen, ya think? You don't suppose they might use the power they have TODAY to restrict where the market goes in the FUTURE? We'll be waiting until they either give up, or technological progress changes the market place. Just pray to God a monopoly doesn't get big enough to be able to stifle innovation too, or we'll never get there. Oh, ohhh shit, that's what happened. Just bend over while Microsoft figures out what the future of your OS will be and hope a competitor decides to go for market share instead of high margins.

Re:A monopoly?

Well, Google isn't just a search engine anymore. Yes it's their core business, but they're definately branching out into other areas. It is perhaps arguable that they're developing into a monopoly for online advertising.

Re:A monopoly?

Most large companies diversify. That doesn't make you a monopoly, nor does the size of a company make you a monopoly.

A monopoly means you completely own a set market.

Microsoft isn't a monopoly because they have so many divisions of their business. They are a monopoly because their OS completely dominates the market, and because they practice illegal tactics to ensure it does.

Google doesn't even dominate the search or advertising markets.

Re:A monopoly?

There are multiple definitions of a monopoly, so I was trying to cover both bases. There are natural monopolies, which aren't "monopolies" in regards to anti-trust laws. I think most people see the word monopoly in the evil, illegal sense. Microsoft is a monopoly in the illegal, anti-trust sense because they violate anti-trust laws and act in an anti-competitive manner. However, the base definition of the word outside legal circles doesn't care about legality.

Google is *NOT* a search company ...

Google is *NOT* a search company, they are an advertising company. In particular a targeted advertising company. Everything they do - search, maps, email, etc - is just a means to collect data on you in order to build a profile. That profile is then used to enable clients to provide you with a targeted ad when you visit the client's website.

In targeted online advertising, and perhaps online advertising in general, Google is the 800 pound Gorilla. They are not quite Microsoft yet, but they are not that far off in online advertising. They are still consolidating, they are on a curve like Microsoft's, just at a far earlier stage.

Google is *NOT* a single thing

The premise of this post seems to be that each company has to be an "X" company, where X is a single noun. If Google is an advertising company, it can therefore logically not be a search company.

Adherence to this view forces you to claim that the company dominating internet search worldwide is in fact not a search company!

If your premises forces you to believe in crazy things, it's time to check your premises. In my world Google is both a search and an advertising company, and several other things as well. It's a little more complex to think this way, but with some practice most people can manage quite well with such a complex world view!

Re:A monopoly?

Didn't know that I could flamebait myself... I wonder who would win in the resulting war?

Monopoly?

...it may just be an inevitable part of having an IT monopoly.

Google can't be considered a monopoly in anything. They got to their position in the search market as they offered a significantly better search product than what was offer at the time (and is still one of the best even though others are catching up). However the other search companies still have reasonable market share, but people often go to Google out of choice (IE users see Windows Live search by default but many choose not to use it - the more it improves the more people will stay with it).

Google is getting powerful, but I can't see it dominating any area to an extent where it can lock people in. There's competitors in every area that Google operates. The benefit of the web as a platform is it's easier to switch both your underlying OS and the web apps that you use.

Re:Monopoly?

It doesn't matter how they got to their position in the search market. They can still be a monopoly in their current market position. There is no underlying requirement that one has to attain a monopoly in a bad way for it to be a monopoly. Further, it is irrelevant whether people use Google by choice or not. You're automatically coupling 'monopoly' with 'bad thing that only a bad company could do.'

Whether Google is a monopoly or not is up for discussion. But you're being blind to what it means and how a company gets to that position.

Re:Monopoly?

Hotmail - try moving your email. You can easily forward your Gmail, and now they are opening up POP and IMAP support, which in turn is freeing you from the ads and web-based service, while still providing you the mail for free.

iGoogle - you suggest migrating an OS is easier that a portal? There are tons of portal pages, and they all support rss feeds. Now you're just trolling. Migrating an OS is no easy task. Changing your home page takes all of 30 seconds.

AdSense - There are alternatives to put ads on your page. Google doesn't even dominate the web advertising market.

Calender - Doesn't Google Calendar use the iCal standard, and can't it easily be imported into other programs?

You are either trolling, or have no clue what you're talking about.

Fuckin A, Brother

I upgraded a minor search term and Google forced me to reactivate!

A recent search caused a bluescreen of links.

And they removed most of the promised features of Google 2.0, making it a useless upgrade. I'm waiting for Google 3.1.

FUD

The founders of Google, when asked to comment about the rapid growth, actually stated, that they were unhappy with the control slipping out of their hands.
Also based on experiences of my friends being recruited to google, I must admit, it's a nightmarish process and HR staff is nowhere near the excellence of the engineers working there.

But I'd still say that comparison of Google and Microsoft is pointless beyond their sheer size.
M$ has been growing with finance in mind, asking for money where no one used to ask for it before (think software licenses, you pay for XBOX, the games and an account and in the corporate world the fees are even higher).
Google on the other hand tends to provide free service for things that used to be costly (email, data mining) and only asking money for the premium services.

So any comparison between the two is pointless.

They aren't even close

Here are the things Google are missing to become like Microsoft:
1. Screwing customers
2. Forcing bad products on their customers
3. Participating in anticompetitive behaviour
4. Having a monopoly
5. Bribing their way through standardisation processes
6. Giving away pay-software to create vendor lock-in
7. Produce horrible DRM that only affects those who actually pay
8. Have a chair-throwing jackass as CEO

Re:They aren't even close

I would have to disagree with at least points 1 and 2, and with the free411 case probably 3 as well.

1) I personally know 3 businesses that are out of business because of adwords shenanigans which Google to this day denies. These businesses saw their adwords budgets increase by orders of magnitude, and click throughs and sales plummet by orders of magnitude.

They went from using $1-2 thousand per week, to suddenly $2000 would get spent in 10 minutes between the hours of 1 and 2am. Google stone walled, denied, and finally did nothing for these small companies. I'm sure they aren't the only ones.

2) They are "forcing" adwords customers to have their ads listed on "link sites". that is a bad product, and if you are on adwords you are FORCED to have your ads listed there as there is no way to opt out

3) by pulling the ultimate MS move with free411 they are most certainly participating in anticompetitive behavior.

Simply put: Corps spread Google FUD

When the hell did we start trusting companies that purposefully screw us to the 10th degree and try to hide it more than we trust a company that is very open about what they do and go to extreme efforts to make the public happy? Google is, in no way, shape, or form evil. What's happened is, many of the major corporations are saying "oh shit, people are going to start expecting google-like service from us and that's really going to screw up our bottom line". In fact, I feel like there are funded, multi-corporation, organized, Google-FUD campaigns out there that put all this garbage into people's heads.

A company that has rendered my computer useless many times because of a false WGA positive? That's evil. A company that injects false TCP flags into sessions to "shape" bandwidth? That's evil. A company that renders a 600 dollar phone useless because I installed a 3rd party program? That's evil.

In fact, the only thing I can recall that google has done ever even remotely evil is a censored version of google search in China. That was a VERY calculated move and they were very open about the decision. Google has actually expressed regret for not standing up for what is right. But this PALES in comparison to the crap other US companies have pulled in China. This includes border-line slave labor and the turning over of information that has led to the death of many innocent people. On the evilness scale, what google did in China was like a .0005 compared to the things other US companies do. Yet we somehow turn a blind eye to them and get up in arms about Google?

Not even a close comparison

Google operates by simply focusing on being the best at what they offer. But they do not force vendor lockin, nor threaten or crush the competition. Infact, several of their strategic moves almost seem to encourage competitors. While yes, they do offer you a one-stop-shop in many ways, but they are not the only ones either. Yahoo, Ask, and even Microsoft all stand there, and Google knows this. But rather than pulling a Microsoft, and bullying themselves into dominance, Google consistantly strives to better itself, to win out by simply being the best at what it is.

Monopoly does not equil to google

Google doesn't have a monopoly or an abusive monopoly like Microsoft has. Google has some web based software (Maps, Docs, etc.) and some installable software (desktop and toolbar) but they are far from having a monopoly, particularly an abusive MS-Like monopoly. The reason Google got ahead is because they had one of the first "clean layouts" that means no banner ads, no flash, nothing that screams "You have won a free iPod Nano" and its fast to load. MSN, Yahoo, And MS-Live all lack that. Sure Google has a lot of ad revenue but its got competition by the "anti-Google" doubleclick.net and other ad companies. Also, if a much, much better search engine came out people would use that, if not then people go to the best which for most is Google. And Google has made a commitment not to be evil like MS has been, they support Linux, Mac and Windows rather then preferring one over the others and that has boosted it. But I seriously think Google is a bit overrated, first I hate ads and most people (who know a thing about technology) use ad-block or have custom CSS to block ads. Secondly, other then ads and search engines, there are monopolies everywhere else in the technology industry, browsers, OSes, and just about everything else be it abusive like MS as the only operating system or De-Facto like Firefox being the primary browser on Linux. I just can't see Google getting anywhere.

Free standards

The moment Google tries to destroy free standards, destroy competition, and break the law regularly at will, let me know.

Until then, can we please stop with all this hyperbole and nonsense about how Google is evil?

Last I checked, MSN and Yahoo both volunteered private data to both US and Chinese governments, and Google was the only company to stand up to both, yet the media kept insisting that Google was the evil party for eventually caving into Chinese law. Google gives money to the Summer of Code project, volunteers tons of code, and also doesn't have a monopoly in their market.

Google hasn't thrown chairs, hasn't threatened to destroy anyone, and doesn't have leaked evidence like the Halloween documents, proving their evil.

Where exactly are the comparisons valid?

Re:Free standards

Most people include a boilerplate, catch-all clause to cover their butts.

Have you actually seen people who have had accounts terminated for speaking poorly of Google?

Conversely, Microsoft disallows you to use terms like Linux anywhere in your XBox Live profile. Microsoft is acting on such a strategy, where as you are suggesting Google could in theory do so, while they haven't.

Google could abuse their position, as could many companies. How many companies depend on MySQL today? What if they abused that position? We don't talk about such possibilities, because it is highly unlikely. The company has established a track record that warrants trust.

Microsoft's early history involved blackmailing, buying out competitors, destroying standards, etc. Microsoft started in very seedy roots. Ask Steve Jobs off the record about Bill Gates some time. Google does not have such a past, nor leadership who use such tactics.

From day 1, they practiced a different model. Be open, don't harass your customers with big, annoying ads everwhere, provide superior alternatives, offer your stuff for free, etc. They have a company motto of "Don't Be Evil". Many of the things that have given Google an advantage, they offer up freely to everyone else.

They have opened the designs and standards on their server and power supplies. They contribute their optimizations back to the MySQL devs. They pay people to develop FOSS. Where is there any evidence that Google is going to start trapping people into their platform and abusing them, especially when Google is often in support of open, cross-platform standards?

Google could have released their own fork of Firefox, and locked people in. Instead they contribute code and money to Firefox. They could have released their own Linux distro, and locked people in. Instead they contribute code to BSD, OpenSolaris, Linux and all kinds of open apps via Summer of Code.

You can force parallels in places if you want. Someone made various parallels between Orson Scott Card's character Ender in Ender's Game with Hitler, and made what seemed to be a convincing arguement based on a number of coincidences that the characters were the same, save for the real biggy. Hitler believed in genocide, and Ender unwittingly committed a genocide and felt guilty for the rest of his life. Sometimes we see these coincidences and overlook the important parts.

In all the areas that really matter, Google is vastly different from Microsoft, and that is why I don't put stock in these comparisons.

Google Could Become an Ad Monopoly

I only skimmed through the article, but it seems to me that Cringley is talking about the advertising. Let's assume for a minute that Google's search engine will be at number 1 for a very long time and thereby small companies will want to advertise with them. The advertisements are driven by the algorithms behind Google's search engines, and if those algorithms were altered it might have a detrimental effect on businesses that rely on Google for a fair portion of its business. It's a sensitive issue because there might be plenty of businesses that rely upon Google for a majority of its advertising. That's a lot of reliance upon algorithms, and to think a handful of lines of code might determine a business's success or failure.

Or perhaps that's overstating it a bit?

Google? Microsoft?

"640 AdWords ought to be enough for anybody!" --Larry Page, Founder of Google.

I don't understand

There are some conspiracy theories I do understand, but the "Google is evil," one is one I've always had a bit of difficulty following.

They've got a ton of services, yes...but I can't think of a single one which doesn't have competitors that I'm entirely free to use the moment I feel like it. If I don't like gmail, I can easily use something else. If I don't like Google itself, I can easily use Yahoo, MSN Live, or any number of others. So the fact is, they're not a monopoly at all...and I actually find their services extremely beneficial and useful, personally.

I know it's been said before, but I have to ask...

Where's the lock-in? I can't see it.

not surprising

The guy who runs the engineering department at Jingle, the guys who own Free411.com, used to be the chief software architect at my current employer. After cleaning up his various messes for two years, I am not terribly surprised that they decided to pass on acquiring the company if they were able to see the source code.

Dupe, dupe and dupe

How many generic "Is Google Evil?" articles are we going to get on Slashdot? I've yet to see one that produces anything newsworthy. They all just make general suggestions that Google is the new evil empire. Not only are these articles devoid of any meat and flawed, they are dupes. Please don't repeat them.

Of course Google is like Microsoft!

Do you have any idea how much work it is for me to change my homepage to search.yahoo.co.uk? Hundreds of thousands of pounds of effort, and just think of the training needed to use a different search engine.

(No, I didn't rtfa - it's cringley after all)

Obligatory aphorism

Power Corrupts.

Monopoly may provide "absolute power" (in a given market) but having billions and billions of dollars and enormous industry influence is quite a lot of power, certainly enough to corrupt.

At some point, people start saying "but we can get away with it" about some dirty move that will create higher profits.

At which point, the old "don't be evil" thing is just...corrupted.

Google is an *ad* platform, not a search engine

Google does not get paid one, thin dime for delivering search results. They get paid for delivering advertisements to potential customers. Google's business model is not all that different from old school, over-the-air TV. Give the customer something they want (TV programming/search results), and while they're consuming that, give them the opportunity to buy something (TV commercials/AdWords, etc.). So, in terms of online ad placement, Google definitely qualifies as a monopoly.

No go back and re-read Cringley's article with this point of view, and I think you'll see his point. In terms of revenue, Google is making some of the same kinds of financial mistakes that other monopolies have made: cozying up to partners, and then crushing them with a copy-cat service, cutting into your partner's business by dinking with their revenue streams, etc. Not a happy place if you work with, but not for, Google.

Personally, I hope and believe that Google is better than that, that they are listening, and will make things right.

Clients and Products

Google's products are not search and gmail etc -- Google's product is a huge number of end users (and Google provides metadata about them, too).

Google's clients are not people who search, or people who use gmail -- Google's clients are companies that pay for ads.

Whether or not Google has a monopoly on placing ads, I don't know, but I doubt it.

Monopoly?

Google cannot be considered a monopoly for the simple fact that their products still are not forced on anyone. End of story. The same cannot be said about Microsoft. Big difference, actually.

Basically there is a difference between a monopoly and a successful company which enjoys most of the market-share. The successful company with good market-share makes good products that people _choose_ to buy or use, while the monopoly focuses primarily on how they can force products onto consumers. In this case, the former describes Google well, and the latter describes Microsoft fairly.

Microsoft fans often stick their heads in the sand or make up excuses, but the undeniable fact is that Microsoft is often found to engage in activities which force their products on consumers. I won't argue the relative quality of their products compared to others because that's not the point. The fact is they're a monopoly, and they're taking choice away from consumers which should never happen.

Who the heck is Robert Crinkley?

I love how the article introduces this author as if, he had some authority. Did he write Word Perfect? Doom? Word? Excel? Linux? Like, if he doesn't know assembly or at least C++ then what's his opinion really worth?

what kind of nda would Free411.com have?

I kind of thing that the name pretty much says it all "free 411." I don't really see what kind of trade secrets google could get from them that wouldn't be obvious.

Google alternatives ..

Where can I go into a hight street shop and buy a PC without Windows?

What alternative search engines are there and how can Google prevent me from using them?

Lawrence Lessig's talk today

http://www.ischool.washington.edu/events/calendar/984 [washington.edu] Lawrence Lessig is going to give a lecture tonight at the Univ. of Washington. The title is Is Google (2008) Microsoft (1998)?

Google is..

.. the next Standard Oil, Bell, GM, DeBeers, Microsoft, and U.S. Steel all rolled up into one. Now that we got that out of the way, can we please move on and report real news?

Just Google?

A couple of weeks ago, I did a post for Alexa Internet about this sort of thing. This Post is the New Black [blogspot.com] took a look at the frequency of "* is the new *" on the web and came up with this graph [blogger.com]; the data says that Apple, Facebook, Google, and MySpace are all the new Microsoft, which is really just the new IBM.

3 groups...

I don't know anything about the free411 thing. That might be "Evil" if it is how Cringely suggests. But with no details, it's hard to speculate.

The adSense complaining is in no way an indicator of a Microsoft-like monopoly. Google must balance the interests of users, content-providers, and advertisers. Subsets of all three groups are trying to game Google for their own benefit. Of those three groups, Google seems to be most leery of offending the users -- and this has worked well for them.

The user, really, is in control here. The user could use another search. They could put ads.google.com (or whatever) in their hosts.txt file (like many have done to doubleclick and others). Even for those who can't/won't do that, users can avoid pages they know have ads that are more annoying than the content is good (Otherwise I would read Dilbert every day -- but not with popup-blocker avoiding popunders.) Further, since the other two groups are trying to game google to get the attention of users, Google acts as a kind of spam filter for the user, only giving them ads that they can manage -- or even ignore. (Thus Google's limits on the number ads per page, etc.)

The content provider wants, simply, to make money. They have content -- which drives page hits -- and want to monetize that. They have some tension with Google over caches and summaries, but Google can make that up to them by increasing their traffic (for free, when the user searches) and maybe by providing money, if they use Google ads.

Advertisers are the loudest complainers, especially those who have chosen to base their business mostly on Google's referals. They also try the hardest to game Google, to get more users. This group seems to think that since they are the ones paying Google, that they're the only customers of Google, and that Google must treat them better than the other two groups. This is also the only group from whose perspective the 'monopoly' claims begin to make sense. If an online business wants traffic, they pretty much have to deal with Google, since Google "controls" so much traffic. Clearly, some of them resent Google for this lack of choice.

The content providers could choose someone other than Google to support their pages, and the users could opt out of google ads if they wanted. But the advertisers are stuck with google. This might allow google to abuse the advertisers if they wanted. I haven't seen them going that far, though. But they are willing to tweak their algorythems in ways that that sometimes hurt advertisers. I don't think it's intentionally "Evil", but the consequences are hard to foresee. (On the other hand, I've never seen google ads screw up a page's layout, much less infect a user's computer with spyware or worse.) I think that Google would love to be completely fair to these customers, but that's "hard," especially since many of these users are trying to be Evil to Google and the other two groups.

Anyway -- this is one way free markets work. The users and content providers have chosen the terms on which they'll deal with advertisers. If you don't like Google, you'll have to come up with something that's more attractive to those groups, in order to compete.

The comparison to Microsoft is there, but pretty weak. Microsoft does have to address the interests of users, 3rd party developers, and hardware manufactures. Microsoft uses its domanance in its OS and office products to keep all three groups locked in to each other and themselves. Microsoft does seem to favor developers over the other two, but only if the developers will lock themselves into the Microsoft-way of doing things (eg, Microsoft APIs instead of portable code.) This locks users in (if the software they want runs only on Windows), which in turn gives MSFT more clout when ordering hardware vendors around. Microsoft lock-in of some users puts pressure on others to do the same (what else do you do when someone sends you a Word2007 or Visio document that needs to be edi

Oh hell I figured it was going to be...

....veripedia (wikipedias for profit version) as they would certainly be better at changing the meaning of terms than MS has been.

New Tag request

evilgooglenoshitsherlock

Google Rubs Them the Wrong Way

The whole "Do No Evil" thing and being the wunderkind of corporations rub people the wrong way because they serve as mirrors to these other firms. When I worked at a hedge fund, a lot of the guys were really hoping for Google to fail and prove to themselves that Google is no better than all the other companies. One trader suggested after the Google IPO that Google should take all their cash and buy out a media company because their amazing IPO, to the trader, was a fluke and Google was itself worthless. They didn't understand Google or the value of what it does. Google keeps beating the odds and the old establishment hates it. They've told themselves so many times that doing evil is OK because it generates money. Google proved them wrong and they want to see Google fail to prove themselves.

Please, please, please don't compare Google to Microsoft. Microsoft represents the old establishment of winning through deceit, monopoly, distrust, FUD, and marketing. Google is a triumph of engineering. Not only that, I think their mentality has really caught on with the newer companies. There were good companies before Google and there will be more after.

Shorter Cringley:

1) Google continually tries to improve its algorithms to deliver an improved experience, rather than sitting on its laurels.
2) Sometimes the change in algorithms has negative consequences for some websites.
3) Some websites are living so close to the edge that one month of Google putting their ads in less optimal places costs them so much money it drives them out of business in a single month.
4) It's not the fault of the marginal businesses who don't have the sense to set daily and monthly expenditure limits they could afford, or who have made themselves so dependent on Google that one month of suboptimal ad placement sinks them. It's Google's fault for trying to improve its algorithms.
5) Therefore, Google is Microsoftian in its evil.

Google is like Microsoft...

except that they don't have a monopoly on anything, haven't been convicted of illegal business practices, and haven't been pressuring customers into exclusive contracts. And they have been sponsoring and supporting true open source projects.

But, yes, they are like Microsoft in that their stock is doing really well.

Where's the article

Apple is the next Microsoft?

Pacing

If things continue at their current pace [google.com], GOOG will exceed MSFT in market cap sometime in the next two years.

RTFA? Or is the title enough these days?

This article was primarily about Google's problems with Ad-Sense, specifically how parked domains are sucking up money from advertisers and giving them very little back.

More specifically, the article was about how Google keeps upgrading their algorithms for Ad-Sense to look good for Wall Street, but how these new algorithms are causing problems, and Google isn't taking any responsibility for an algorithm misbehaving. The article also noted Google's launch of Goog411, after discussions with Free411 on a buyout, and how killing tiny businesses is evil.

So no, this article was not, "Google as the Next Monopoly," which so many of you are arguing about - this article is, "Google as the Next Oversized, Inept, and Mean IT Company." Whether Google is a monopoly or not (and it is vertical monopoly by the way), this article is about Google making bad decisions for money, then not owning up to them.

Robert X. Cringely and Dvorak

What a great life.

Surface every once in a while and spout off something controversial, collect a paycheck and never respond to critics.

There was a time on Slashdot where every other story was about something Cringely wrote. Let's hope this is a one time shot.

Is today "obvious day"?

First Netflix May Already Be Killing Blockbuster? [slashdot.org] and now this? What year is it now, 2003?

"vendor lock" and "network effect" don't apply

to google.

Google is in a very different business. Lookup "vendor lock" and "network effect" on wikipedia.

same people ... same attitude

Google and M$ are both filled with arrogant, self important pricks.
They are already more alike than different.

Adword Businesses

There is a large number of people whining that Google's constant changing of adwords is killing their revenue or business, and that must be a sign the Google's evil.

Now I'm sorry (ish) that you may have lost money, but Google doesn't exist to keep your flawed business model alive. Adwords doesn't give any guarantees of a level of income, and never has.

So really the people to blame here are your business advisor's and bank managers, that thought that having your major income supply be total dependant on a third party would make good sound business sense!

Google terms of service ?! WTF

before u say google is "innocent" comment on this: from: https://www.google.com/accounts/TOS?loc=US&hl=en [google.com] google terms of service - gmail they can use stuff from ur emails and share it with other companies, can publish it else where and a lot of other things.... 11. Content licence from you 11.1 You retain copyright and any other rights you already hold in Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. By submitting, posting or displaying the content you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive licence to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. This licence is for the sole purpose of enabling Google to display, distribute and promote the Services and may be revoked for certain Services as defined in the Additional Terms of those Services. 11.2 You agree that this licence includes a right for Google to make such Content available to other companies, organizations or individuals with whom Google has relationships for the provision of syndicated services, and to use such Content in connection with the provision of those services. 11.3 You understand that Google, in performing the required technical steps to provide the Services to our users, may (a) transmit or distribute your Content over various public networks and in various media; and (b) make such changes to your Content as are necessary to conform and adapt that Content to the technical requirements of connecting networks, devices, services or media. You agree that this licence shall permit Google to take these actions. 11.4 You confirm and warrant to Google that you have all the rights, power and authority necessary to grant the above licence.

Googleland

All is not well in Googleand! Once the author made the EBay and Google comparison that was all I needed to know, customer service that is beyond pathetic and a company not worth my time. Fortunately I have never experienced these types of problems with MS, so I don't understand the title of the article and how it relates. Maybe the author should have chosen another title or rewrite the article with MS comparisons.

Cringe hasn't made his case.

I'm not going to defend Google using negotiations for espionage: if that kind of thing is going on it's pretty slimy. But I'm not sure how that's related to the greater part of his article.

Google changes their algorithms all the time because they (and other search-engine companies) are in a continual fight with "search optimization" companies, and have been since before Google existed. They can't stick with any specific algorithm longer than it takes for the people trying to fake them out to figure out what works. It's not just the wild west out there, it's a wild west where the bandits can change the coach routes and schedule by pasting a new one over the old broadsheet... even if the coach has already left.