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Re:Google and Facebook are monopolies. Does it matter? [audio] by umvi on Thursday November 15, 2018 @11:59AM (#18460949)
> It is an email server and client, a calendar, an online office suite, a cloud provider, a mobile platform, and I can go on listing things to fill up several pages of what Google is.

In my mind search, email, calendar, cloud, drive are all separate services. Just because I use Google Search doesn't mean I use google drive and gmail. In fact, I use Microsoft's OneDrive most of the time instead of Google Drive, and I don't use Calendar at all (much prefer Outlook).

You do not have to build out that entire list to compete with Google - you can build and compete with a superior version of just one. Even indie developers can (and do - successfully) compete with services like Calendar.

Re:Google and Facebook are monopolies. Does it matter? [audio] by s3r3nity on Thursday November 15, 2018 @01:02PM (#18461603)
In general I agree with you, but there are certain cases where bundling of goods and services can lead to anti-competitive scenarios due to the "price" savings of bundling. Especially if that lower price is paid for by market power from another market.

Example: now that Google says that they don't mine email / calendar / docs data for ads, that means they don't make direct revenue from those services - unless a user pays for them directly a la G Suite or Google Drive pricing. Therefore Google leverages strong market share and revenue from Search to invest in these services to bundle them and offer them for free.

In theory any other company can build individual blocks, but most likely could not (1) offer them for free, nor (2) address the switching cost that a user of Google's services does not have (i.e. having multiple tabs or different applications opened to use email + calendar + files + etc.) If this wasn't a technology company, but like a p&g company, hypothetically, this would be clear cut monopolistic behavior.

That said, it's a thorny issue and I could see both sides, and the technology market landscape necessitates an analysis of our definitions of monopoly / market share / competition, etc.