When random person X complains about, say, Google having a monopoly, there are two possibilities:
- Person X means something along "Google has a dominant market position and abuses its power", slightly abusing the meaning of "monopoly".
- Person X means Google is literally a monopoly, that it is not possible to get online ads otherwise and does not know that firms such as Facebook exist.
Somehow a lot of people choose to believe interpretation #2 is true, and spend a lot of time debating whether this or that company is a "monopoly" as if it is somehow more important than the substantive issues.
Not to accuse anyone here of this, but intentionally doing what you describe is an disingenuous but effective way of shaping the conversation to discourage scrutiny of more general kinds of anti-competitive behavior. I'm sure it's part of any monopolist's PR strategy (or large business engaged in anti-competitive behavior, to be more precise).
Furthermore, in the legal context the meaning is more clear-cut than you make out, though there is significant room for debate. I would not put it anywhere near “freedom” in terms of loose definitions. There are rigorous tests for determining whether a company should be deemed to be a monopoly within a specific market (which requires both a method for defining the boundary of a market, and what “dominant” means.)
This is also different by country, see
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherman_Antitrust_Act_of_189... Vs https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_competition_l...
I think your general point is to stop focusing on monopoly and get more familiar with all of the different antitrust provisions, to which I would wholeheartedly agree.
Take the anti-trust case against Microsoft, for example, the market was defined as that for computer operating systems for stand-alone personal computers using microchips of the kind manufactured by Intel. This left out not only operating systems running on Apple computers but also other operating systems such as those produced by Sun Microsystems for multiple computers or the Linux system for stand-alone computers. In its narrowly defined market, Microsoft clearly had a “dominant” share.
Also lots of people use Amazon to search for products so it's not clear to me how there is a market failure here.
> "Monopoly" is one of such words (others candidate include: freedom, democracy, justice).
-- there is a much more rigorous definition of Monopoly than the other ones you listed. You're claiming that it is some undefined concept that varies from person to person, but I think that's only true in the sense that "encryption" or "space-time" has a loose definition; most lay people don't understand technical jargon, and often misuse the jargon when they think they know what they are talking about. But that doesn't mean there _isn't_ a well-defined meaning that is agreed upon by the specialists that actually work in the domain in question.
The other words you listed do not have clear-cut legal definitions in the same way; they are not technical jargon defining criteria for enforceable regulations with tests and case-law backing them up.
Google is the ONLY ad provider that give results, all others don't even get any clicks.
How that is not a monopoly on the classic definition? Every time Google has a bug and screw with my ads, the revenue of the company I work for tanks hard, and I am yet to find any solution for it.
It's true that if your looking at targeting users searching for something that it's basically just Google. But people are increasingly using apps and specific sites over general surfing. Reddit, tiktok, snap, etc. all have their own ads and collectively represent major competition.
Being effective doesn't make you a monopoly.
Keep in mind that search engine traffic is enormous, and can fairly be called a "trade" or "commodity/service" that can be monopolized in it's own right.
I don't think anybody is saying that google has a monopoly on all advertising.
Google owns extremely valuable ad space but that to me doesn't make a monopoly just because Bing or Facebook's ad space isn't as good for certain companies.
Monopolies are traditionally assessed in terms of product categories, not entire industries. Nobody ever said "standard oil isn't a monopoly, because you can also buy coal fuel"
Now, one might say "But users can choose other search engines." But users are the resource, not the customers. Right now, Google controls most of these resources. And the very nature of search means they're not sharing access with competitors.
You mean clearchannel? (Now iHeartRadio)
If I google search for "koop ebike" and you're not on the first page you might as well close your shop.
At a point when the cost of entry is too high and it's not humanly possible to beat it, isn't it essentially impossible to compete, thus make it a monopoly?
And what data would that be? All search engines crawl the same web.
Being the search engine, if I search Asus computer, do you think it's the fact that there's Asus computer in the crawled content that will be used for targeting, or the fact that I searched Asus computer? When I click on the first link that say "Asus computer for cheap", do you think it's the existence of the page "Asus computer for cheap" that will help in targeting my ads, or the fact that I clicked on a page where it's about the value of Asus computers?
What matter isn't the content, it's knowing what each individual click and read. That data come from Google Analytic and Google Ads.
Why do you think Android exist? Why do you think Google Chrome exist, why do you think 8.8.8.8 exist. You are really mistaken if you believe they are for the good of customer (even though it's true they do bring some good), they are there to get that data and be the one that exclusively get that data.
If you want to compete with them, you'll need to beat Android, beat Chrome, beat their search engine, beat EVERYTHING that make Google what they are. Not saying it's not possible, but the cost of it make it nearly impossible.
> You are really mistaken if you believe they are for the good of customer
You are responding to a bunch of strawman arguments I never made. All those data you mention is plausibly increasing their targeting and revenue, but claiming that it is the biggest differentiating factor is a stretch and I don't think is likely. Facebook has more ground truth demographic data that Google has to infer or outsource for their billions of users, yet they weren't able to dominate competition solely on that basis.
> If you want to compete with them, you'll need to beat Android, beat Chrome, beat their search engine, beat EVERYTHING that make Google what they are. Not saying it's not possible, but the cost of it make it nearly impossible.
No, if you want to compete with them, you just need to have a damn good product that billions of people use multiple times a day. Turns out search engines are a pretty good fit for that. You can have a platform that can profile users to their genes, you still need raw the engagement numbers to make money out of it. At the end of the day it is accumulation of commissions for bits and bobs sold over internet ads.
* using billions of people clicks to infer what the best results for every single search query
If crawling was enough, we wouldn't be all here arguing that Google is too big. It's not the tentative that are missing.
FWIW my dad ran a few FB ads for his SME and it was alright, although nothing stellar either. He didn't run on Google though so I can't really draw a comparison.
If the allegations are true then I can't see a solution that does not involve breaking Google up. The incentives to cheat are likely just undeniable over a time scale of years.
So fine, Google doesn't have a monopoly on online ads, but they do have a monopoly on search ads.
> Courts do not require a literal monopoly before applying rules for single firm conduct; that term is used as shorthand for a firm with significant and durable market power — that is, the long term ability to raise price or exclude competitors. That is how that term is used here: a "monopolist" is a firm with significant and durable market power.
[1] https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/competition-guidance/guide-a...
Some violations (price fixing, bid rigging) are considered so egregious that they are illegal regardless of market share.
Other violations (tying) require some degree of market power.
Violations related to monopolization or attempted monopolization do require monopoly power (or the dangerous probability of obtaining it it).
Anti-trust isn't about defeating theoretical monopolies. It's about protecting consumers, new businesses, the market from abuses through overwhelming market power.
So your first possibility seems right on the money and appropriate.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/descriptive-vs...
People wanting to nitpick about the word monopoly should be educated (first offense) or mocked and shunned (repeat intentional offenders).
Google has a 73% share of online advertising, according to a random study from 2019.
It's almost impossible to have rational discourse these days because accurately describing things is no longer required (and if you care to try you are "mocked and shunned") so everyone is arguing without a common set of understandings or facts or even language that is consistent.
Kind of pathetic.
Your water company may be a monopoly. You may have no choice but to use it (in cities you cannot even drill your own well or in some cases are banned from collecting rainwater). That is a monopoly. As someone who grew up using a well, this is a clear difference and impact.
There are other words, but it is a bit of a mouthful.
Because of these exact issues, the way that I describe the situation is usually as follows "Company X has significant market power, and is engaging in anti-competitive actions".
I have yet to have someone object to that definition.
It's not that clear how much that helps. The places where Google won (Maps, Gmail, Chrome) they had a pretty clearly better product. Other places where they didn't (Duo/Hangouts, Plus, Gsuite, Chromebook, GCloud) they don't dominate the market.
It's clear that it helps enough to subsidize the entire rest of the Google operation (enough to run a more computationally and sophisticated business like search). AdTech is all about targeting by extracting context and minimally about tracking events.
Leveraging search to power ad targeting is the most efficient means. I'm not sure how this is a topic of debate other than to split hairs on what measuring stick to use.
You need to read like 8 paragraphs deep to get to that and there is no real explanation as to why it is objectively better - just a link to an article where some journalists apparently thought it was better.
DeepL German: “The allegedly "objectively" better translator is DeepL.”
Google Translate German: “The alleged "objectively" better translator is DeepL”
DeepL Spanish: “The allegedly "objectively" better translator is DeepL.”
Google Translate Spanish: “The best translator "objectively" that is claimed is DeepL.”
As a native English speaker, the DeepL results seem clearly clearer and cleaner to me. If broad consensus isn’t evidence to you, you could also compare quantity of languages instead of quality of translations, in which case you’d find that Google Translate is missing languages that Microsoft Translate has. Either way, Google certainly doesn’t have “a pretty clearly better product.”
フクロネコの仲間の中でもっともふ地いことで知られています
DeepL: It is known to be the most ground-breaking of all the bovine cats
Google: Known for being the most remote of all quolls
Let's consider a few more examples of abuse of market dominance
1) Retail Me Not
Google through Google Venture secretly invested in them and didn't disclose that
Then for next 3 years, Retail Me Not was #1 for EVERY SINGLE deal and coupon search term on Google
Is that an abuse of market dominance? Pretty Sure
Is it illegal? According to US Anti Trust Law - not sure. A lawyer can step in
2) A market we are in
The largest 2 players (us and another company) are #40 and #41 when people search for the biggest key word
Not #2, Not #10
At #40 and #41
Who is in the Top 10?
companies that advertise A LOT on Google, even though they are distant 4th and 6th in the market
Not only that, they do it in blatant ways
Last year, they pumped up organic traffic to one of our competitors THIRTY TIMES over night
So, the top two companies (another company and us) saw ZERO CHANGE
However, a company that is a distant 4th in the market suddenly got its organic search engine traffic increased 30 times
Pretty sure in 3 or 4 years it will be revealed that Google invested in them or did some tie up
*
Google is basically using Search as a weapon
Before Google Flights we were mostly competing against Expedia/Kayak/etc. Now Google Flights indirectly gives the airlines the top rank again, and we're competing against the OTA's for the secondary spots with ads and SEO. I can also anecdotally attest that Instagram ads work very well for airlines. (Well... worked very well, pre march 2020 and all).
I do agree with your main sentiment though, and the case could totally be made that google flights is doubly screwing over the OTA's now. Just wanted to share some interesting anecdata.
I can remember combing through page after page looking for the results I wanted. Try that today and Google is likely to temporarily block you, accusing you of having "strange activity" coming from your computer, or looking like a "bot".
The more Google has tried to "solve" the problem of finding the appropriate results for the particular searcher within the raw results returned from the query, the more they have manipulated the raw results to suit their own perspective. There is no option to get those raw results and search within them the way you want. There is only Google's way -- reorder them according to Google's "secret" processes. Do not dig into subsequent pages, stay on page one. This necessarily carries a Google bias. It also creates a "winner-take-all" contest to reach page one that Google's exploits for selling online ad services.
In other words, not only does Google manipulate searches through deciding the "1st search result", it actually created this concept of "1st search result" with respect to web search. The idea that Google could guess the "correct" search result, reorder the raw results and place the "best" one at the top of the first page of results was in fact Google's idea.
Thanks to Google, reordering the raw results has become commonplace so no one really thinks about this anymore, but it is this (biased) reordering that allows Google to profit.
Searching for flights is still a search. You wouldn't expect the first result of "cat pictures" to be Bing's search results for cat pictures, so it's also natural that the first result of "flight nyc la" would return actual flights as its first result would return actual flights rather than a link to Expedia.
Google was fined billions of euros for doing that.
There is an example at the end of the comment you are replying to, flights. Two other examples that took me only a couple of minutes to find: google 'smart thermostat' or 'corporate email providers'
Google has often used data acquired through their market position to start subsidiaries to unfairly compete with their ad customers.
The reason it’s unfair is because Google has not just the ad data but the web search data, this often results in a Google ad customer going from #1 google Organic search result for key terms, to #2 to Google’s competing subsidiary.
Worse from going from #1 to #2 to a google product, the natural instinct to save the business is to increase ad spend to be sure you are still the #1 ad to our place the google at the top of organic search, of course ad spend goes right into the pocket of your new competitors core business anyway, and in many instances googles subsidiary will start bidding for your same keywords so they literally can’t lose competing with your business rather the have basically acquired an off form of rent seeking equity or they kill your business and become the market incumbent.
Of course the kicker are those instances a google subsidiary gets a custom tool at the top of google results (such as Flights) above both organic and ads.