> I know that Google is super powerful and has great products but what exactly are (if any) examples of Google showing anti-competitive behaviour?<p>At least at one point, they nagged you incessantly to install Chrome when you used Google Search. I would attribute Chrome's current <i>dominance</i> [1] to that fact, and that fact alone. That's uncannily like the anti-competitive behavior Microsoft was judged to have used to push Internet Explorer into a dominant position and drive Netscape out of the market.<p>[1] If Chrome had been allowed to grow its market share organically, I think would have still been popular, just not dominant. Firefox would have a bigger market share than it does now, for instance.
The "or" in the question is a false dichotomy. Many historic examples of monopolistic abuse originated from market power that was initially acquired via excellence in innovation or execution.<p>Also many anti-competitive behaviors, like certain pricing/tying/bundling/cross-subsidization strategies, are perfectly legal for a small operator, but <i>become</i> illegal when a firm gains immense market power. And there is rarely a "bright line" for when a firm crosses that threshold, and the things it used to do become illegal. The firm pretty much has to wait for pushback via prosecution – actual or threatened – and of course will keep denying there's anything wrong with their habitual practices indefinitely, as a matter of corporate culture.
When I worked at Google as an intern, there were lots of people internally that were very aware that most of their core products don't have a locked in monopoly like Amazon, Facebook, or Apple do. For example, after the Cambridge Analytica stuff, lots of people wanted to leave Facebook, but mostly aren't able to due to network effects. In contrast, using Bing instead of Google Search is so easy that I do so occasionally when I'm having trouble finding something through Google. If their product was suddenly worse than the competition, they could lose their entire user base in days, because the network effects of personalized search are nowhere near the network effects of Facebook. The same is true for Maps, Gmail (data export is allowed), Drive, Photos, Chrome, Ads (for websites) and most of their other core products.
I guess the question of whether they "are a monopoly" is largely dependent on what your definition of monopoly is, but the lack of lock-in means they aren't able to exploit their market dominance in most of the ways that traditionally make monopolies problematic.
Google Play / Android is a good example where this is less true, although alternate Android app stores and OS's do exist (see Amazon's attempt to make Fire OS)
Monopolistic behavior and strong product development practices are not mutually exclusive.<p>Google can put in the effort to make a great new product, but use its market dominance to make sure that it’s products have a better chance to succeed vs it’s competitors.
Regardless of whether they abuse their monopoly power or not, it is undeniable that Google is either a monopoly or member of an oligopoly in several areas, including: search, advertisement (adwords), email (gmail), cloud infrastructure (GCP), navigation (google maps), SaaS productivity suite (google docs), mobile operating systems (android), web browsers (chrome), etc.<p>Google certainly isn't as bad at abusing its monopoly power as it could be, but, well, it certainly isn't perfect either.
In search, there have been instances where they've put their weight behind some products (Yelp vs Google reviews).<p>It is also under scrutiny in the EU. Their antidote seems to be creating Alphabet and styling Google as an advertising company rather a search engine.<p>That said, I for one, think they haven't put out and succeeded with subpar products by the sheer force of their control over search (Google Plus, Google Buzz, ...).
One definition of a monopoly is the Sherman Antitrust Act - 75% or more market share.<p>Google has a monopoly in search (90% or more share) and they also control north of 60% of internet ad revenue, and they have a monopoly in browsers.<p>Google repeatedly has leveraged monopolies in one area to gain monopolies in other areas.<p>They also store tons of data on all of us, whether we want to use them or not. Since that data is not on devices we own, it is easy pickings for law enforcement to get ahold of as the traditional protections do not apply. If NSA or some government agency collected this data with so little oversight or protection, it would be outrageous. They wouldn't get away with saying "We promise not to be evil".<p>If Google cuts off service to you, good luck. You have little recourse.<p>Google enters markets, dominates them with a product, and then drops the product, destroying the market.<p>Google is also highly partisan, overwhelmingly backing a single political party. This is unhealthy to say the least.
They have their share of failed products (see <a href="https://www.computerworlduk.com/galleries/it-vendors/google-graveyard-3508070/%3famp" rel="nofollow">https://www.computerworlduk.com/galleries/it-vendors/google-...</a>)<p>Their position allows them to distribute their products to a larger audience, quicker than others for sure, but I don’t believe that’s a formula for success per se.<p>Successful products like Gmail, grew like a scrappy startup working on a great product would grow.<p>The first version Paul made was just a search engine for <i>his own</i> email. He then shared it with some friends/colleagues.<p>Gradually more features were added to improve the product and now we all have Gmail.<p>I’m sure the Google brand helped with distribution at some point later on, but users aren’t stupid. They pick the product they love using (unless they’re forced in an enterprise type of environment)
Google is pretty monopolistic. They have shown anti-competitive behavior with local, maps, etc. Would create a more competitive marketplace if Google has broken up into separate publicly traded entities (ie like Waymo)
This may be downvoted to oblivion, but here goes:<p>I think part of the problem with our current framing of what is "anti-competitive" or "monopolistic" focuses on consumers. A classical monopolist artificially limits supply and drives up prices to maximize profits (see, for example, the business practices of Standard Oil). That's completely orthogonal to Google's business model for two reasons:<p>1) For consumers, most products have no downward mobility in price from competition. The search is already free (ie. literally the lowest price possible). How can something be bad for consumers if it's free? Similar things can be said of gmail, maps, etc.
2) Google doesn't limit supply of its products within reasonable use (when's the last time you got a communication from Google demanding you do fewer searches?)<p>I think the question you should perhaps ask is "when we consider regulating behavior of large firms, is regulation that's good for consumers actually good for society?"
There was that time they colluded with Apple not to compete for talent and keep salaries artificially low.<p><a href="https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-fi-tn-apple-google-conspiracy-20140523-story.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-fi-tn-apple-google-co...</a>
> I know that Google is super powerful and has great products<p>I'd say Google used to be a whole lot better.<p>> but what exactly are (if any) examples of Google showing anti-competitive behaviour?<p>Chrome:<p>- how they push it (massive advertising, bundling etc)<p>- how they use their massive web properties to make other browsers look bad
I'm no expert but I believe to move from "great product builder" to "monopoly" you have to actively block others from competing or doing things that would prevent their success.
Why do you believe Google is "really good at building useful products"? Would you buy any of them if they didn't have the Google brand (or pay for any of the free ones for that matter)?
Data.<p>Data.<p>Data.<p>The only reason Google has anything they have is their data and their user lock in.<p>The software and culture are nice, as are the lunches. But seriously, their data is the only thing that keeps them from becoming one player among many.
Google Ads is very much a self-supporting monopoly. Turns out online ads are a winner-take-all market, as Overture/Yahoo discovered in their demise.
There is no monopoly when your stuff is free, has virtually zero replacement cost and no lock-in.<p>The "google is a monopoly" trope was introduced and cultivated by Steve Ballmer's Microsoft and it's being constantly adopted and revised by anyone with an axe to grind.
>Is Google a monopoly?<p>Yes in more than one area. The lowest hanging fruit (which will cause downvotes): Google Play. No one can release anything Google disagrees with on Google Play.... but google could. Google and Apple really should be separated from their stores. They know <i>everything</i> that happens on them and no one can compete against that.<p>Bundling Chrome with Android (and Apple apps in iOS) is no different than Microsoft bundling IE or Windows media player.