Google is going to win AI and kill all the other market participants.

They have the revenues to support all of this.

They spent time learning from all the players and can now fast follow into every market. Now they're fast and nimble and are willing to clone other products wholesale, fork VSCode, etc.

They're developing all of this, meanwhile Pichai is calling it a "bubble" to put a chill on funding (read: competition). It's not like Google is slowing down.

We had a chance to break them up with regulation, and we didn't. Now they're going to kill every market participant.

This isn't healthy. We have an invasive species in the ecology eating up all the diverse, healthy species.

a16z and YC must hate this. It puts a cap on their returns.

As engineers, you should certainly hate this. Google does everything it can to push wages down. Layoffs, offshoring, colluding with competitors. Fewer startups mean fewer rewards for innovation capital and more accrual to the conglomerate taxing the entire internet.

Chrome, Android, Search, Ads, YouTube, Cloud, Workspace, Other Bets, and AI/Deepmind need to be split into separate companies.

Call or email your legislators and ask for antitrust enforcement: https://pluralpolicy.com/find-your-legislator/

Demand a Google breakup.

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astrange 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Google? Push wages down? Google is mostly known for paying top of market to keep a zoo of engineers whose only output is blog posts about how smart they are because they solved a problem they also caused.

(presumably because if they touch the ad system it might break)

> a16z and YC must hate this. It puts a cap on their returns.

And a16z's main business is investing in financial scams.

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poemxo 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

For the wage suppression thing, Google pays their engineers better than say Amazon or Microsoft.

	▲	soperj 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		He was talking about when Apple(under Steve Jobs) colluded with everyone (including Google), but doesn't seem to want to name Apple specifically.

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Fairburn 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

You ok?

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ryandvm 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Has Google *ever* successfully entered and taken over an existing market?

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ghc 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

You mean like web search, webmail, internet ads, maps, calendars, browsers, smartphone operating systems, online document editing, and translation? I mean, I'm not even including stuff they acquired early like YouTube. Google was the most feared company for a decade or more for a good reason: they absolutely devoured competition in what were thought to be mature markets.

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fl0ki 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Putting aside that several of these were acquisitions, these are all great examples of things where Google introduced something for free because it would make the money through advertising, both directly and through ecosystem effects. Even the paid enterprise versions of these services were a tiny % of Google's overall gross revenue.

Prior to the push into Cloud computing, Ad revenue was well over 90% of all Google gross income, and Cloud was the first big way they diversified. GCP is definitely a credible competitor these days, but it did not devour AWS. Other commercial Google services didn't even become credible competitors, e.g. Google Stadia was a technically exceptional platform that got nowhere with customers.

The question now is whether Google carves out an edge in AI that makes it profitable overall, directly or strategically. Like many companies, there seems to be a presumption of potentially infinite upside, which is what it would take to justify the astronomical costs.

	▲	ghc 21 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		I'm not sure you can call Docs (Writely) and Android acquisitions though. Android was an OS for cameras and Writely was an experimental rich text editor, not a word processor. It's not like Youtube where they legitimately bought their way to dominance. And I'd argue that even in the case of DoubleClick, google was already dominating the search advertising market when they bought DoubleClick to consolidate their dominance.

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rvnx 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Do you have a source for that ? Because according to official papers submitted by Google to the court this is absolutely not the case

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Towaway69 4 hours ago | parent [-]

There are official court documents where google disowns google search? Or for what do you need a source?

Google spreadsheet was another amazing product back in the day.

	▲	rvnx 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Mh ? https://static01.nyt.com/newsgraphics/documenttools/f6ab5c36... > Plaintiffs maintain that Google has monopoly power in the product market for general search services in the United States. > According to Plaintiffs, Google has a dominant and durable share in that market (general search), and that share is protected by high barriers to entry. > Google counters that there is no such thing as a product market for general search services. > What exists instead, Google insists, is a broader market for query response. (+ yes obviously, products like Sheets or Maps were amazing, and are still very much the best. It was a joke to say that even Google denies its own success, the same way as the earlier comment).

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gcr 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Google's definitively taken over search, ads, e-mail, maps, office (for small/medium business).

They're struggling on cloud, AI, ISP, videoconferencing, and others...

	▲	hirako2000 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		They clearly don't want to fold on AI.

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QuercusMax 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Search, back in the late '90s

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darkmarmot 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Besides search, Android kinda killed Nokia and friends for the consumer phone market.

	▲	abirch 5 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		To be fair, Microsoft killed Nokia.
	▲	wiseowise 5 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		iPhone did it, not Android.

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mksreddy 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Search, browser, Mobile.

	▲	Aspos 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		maps as well. email client in the browser.

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cpa 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Chrome?

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p3rls 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

[dead]

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tayo42 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

>They spent time learning from all the players and can now fast follow into every market.

Google has never successfully done that? Maybe once?