I spent my childhood living in Naples, Italy. The city and community was filled with competition. My dad owned his own pizza place next to his cousins pizza place. They were angry at each other, many times going to the street in their white cooking clothes and yelling at each other. Other one took off customers from the another. They could had sold many more delicious pizzas, but couldn't because there just wasn't enough customers. What I learned from it was that you need a clean playing field, so I moved t
While I severely doubt the truth of the above anecdote (especially given your username) the basic point is correct. In the vast majority of circumstances more competition in a market is better for consumers not worse. This is one of the major reasons the United States has anti-trust rules. Consumers should be far more worried about a single monolith controlling an entire industry.
None of this stuff is surprising in any way. You're right that consumers should worry more about monopolies, yet this competition is proof that the monopolies are weaker than ever, which is a win for consumers. Google has been deliberately undermining MS for years for example by supporting firefox in order to wrest the browser market from MS. Once they went public with the Chrome browser, android and the chrome OS it became obvious that Google feels strong enough to go head to head with MS in a far more direct manner. The mere fact that MS felt compelled to create Bing (and IE 8, etc.) illustrates that Google is successfully pressuring MS.
In the end it all comes down to how they get paid. MS wants cash up front, Google gets money from ad revenue. So long as the dichotomy remains healthy and dynamic it will result in more consumer choice. Just don't act surprised down the road if, in the event Google becomes the market dominating monolith MS once was, they begin acting like a monopoly. In the end they're still just a business, predictably out to make a profit.
Just don't act surprised down the road if, in the event Google becomes the market dominating monolith MS once was, they begin acting like a monopoly.
I think it is a matter of priorities. We need Google to prevent Microsoft from extending their monopoly on the desktop onto the internet. Just imagine a world where Microsoft dominates both. Really scary thought! Once the Microsoft threat of total world domination diminishes, then we will worry about Google - if we need to. Google has done so much good in this
A mathematician is a device for turning coffee into theorems.
-- P. Erdos
This is how we did it in Naples (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:This is how we did it in Naples (Score:3, Interesting)
None of this stuff is surprising in any way. You're right that consumers should worry more about monopolies, yet this competition is proof that the monopolies are weaker than ever, which is a win for consumers. Google has been deliberately undermining MS for years for example by supporting firefox in order to wrest the browser market from MS. Once they went public with the Chrome browser, android and the chrome OS it became obvious that Google feels strong enough to go head to head with MS in a far more direct manner. The mere fact that MS felt compelled to create Bing (and IE 8, etc.) illustrates that Google is successfully pressuring MS.
In the end it all comes down to how they get paid. MS wants cash up front, Google gets money from ad revenue. So long as the dichotomy remains healthy and dynamic it will result in more consumer choice. Just don't act surprised down the road if, in the event Google becomes the market dominating monolith MS once was, they begin acting like a monopoly. In the end they're still just a business, predictably out to make a profit.
Re: (Score:2)
I think it is a matter of priorities. We need Google to prevent Microsoft from extending their monopoly on the desktop onto the internet. Just imagine a world where Microsoft dominates both. Really scary thought! Once the Microsoft threat of total world domination diminishes, then we will worry about Google - if we need to. Google has done so much good in this