Google Claims They "Just Aren't That Big" 283
The New York Times is reporting that Google is making the case that they just aren't that big, especially from an anti-trust point of view. While they certainly corner the market in search, advertising, and online video, Dana Wagner, Google's "senior competition counsel," is working hard to convince the public that "competition is a click away." "None of the investigations take aim at Google's core advertising business. And unlike other technology giants in years past, Google has not been accused of anticompetitive tactics. But the investigations and carping from competitors and critics have Google fighting to dispel the notion that it has a lock on its market, even as it increases its share of search and online advertising. Eyes are rolling, especially in reaction to the idea that Google is a relatively small player in a giant market. 'They describe where they are in a market under a kind of a fairy-tale spun gloss that doesn't reflect their dominance of key sectors,' said Jeff Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy. 'Google search is an absolute must-have for every marketer in the world.'"
they're not that big by most measures (Score:5, Informative)
They might still be subject to antitrust issues if they're dominant in a particular market, but the statement that they "aren't that big" does seem objectively true, by most measures other than public fame.
Some major tech companies by number of employees:
And by revenue:
And by net income:
Re:they're not that big by most measures (Score:1, Informative)
... but the statement that they "aren't that big" does seem objectively true, by most measures other than public fame.
I disagree. I am no economist or accountant but I believe market cap [wikipedia.org] is a better way to measure the public consensus on the value of a company. And if you look at these figures, Google rivals IBM and Microsoft kills both of them. But this is all moot since they are all large-cap companies falling into the $10 billion to $200 billion range. If Google exists in this range, they cannot go around saying they're "not that big." You effectively compared three of the largest companies in the world today while ignoring 99.9999% of the other ones. You should be truly objective and put those three companies into context of the bigger picture. What's a small to medium search company's market cap? Not over $10 billion.
Re:That's Weird, Because Fiscally ... (Score:5, Informative)
Market Cap is a mixture of future expectations, growth, hype, and irrational exhuberance.
GMGMQ, -- General Motors in a pink sheet -- has a market cap of 677 Million (10 times more than /. corporate parent sourceforge). Yet GM has earnings per share of -$60. Their true value is -$100 billion or so. In a few weeks, they'll finish their bankruptcy and that 677 million in market cap is guaranteed to drop to 0.
Re:They're not big. (Score:5, Informative)
Er.. curious how you got to 'no'
Google did google video, it wasnt doing well, they bought Youtube and are now #1.
Google did maps, it was okay but not #1, they bought Keyhole(now google earth) and advanced their tech to become #1
They've also bought sketchup, grandcentral(google voice), and a few other smaller projects with varying success.
Re:Google buys out the competition (Score:1, Informative)
At least Google continues the bought-out product line, with something on-par with the original value. Many companies buy out a competitor to kill the product line.
Other companies, tech or otherwise, destroy the competition. For example, the automobile industry bought out & eliminated trolleys. Microsoft ate Sysbase.
Don't get me wrong. This is a monopolistic approach, but it doesn't destroy tech innovation. It just wrecks capitalism.
Re:The alternative is much worse (Score:5, Informative)
The fact that Explorer is just an extension of IE (XP still opens IE when you type a url into the adress bar of Explorer) speaks for itself.
IE is everywhere in XP, less in Vista, but thanks to some EU regulations, no more in Windows 7. So until that day, yes, you are forced to use IE.
Re:Free Market!?!? (Score:3, Informative)
This makes me wonder, 1. Isn't "An absolute must-have" kind of the point of creating, promoting, and maintaining anything in a modern economy, and 2. SO WHAT?!?! Google, while a gargantuan entity in the Search and On-Line AD world, doesn't employ tactics that scream anti-trust to me just see http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=yahoo&aq=f&oq=&aqi=g10 [google.com], I mean they link to their competitor's very prominently in their own search terms. Do you picture Mircosoft linking to Apple? Probably not.
Could have fooled me.
http://www.bing.com/search?q=apple&go=&form=QBLH [bing.com]
I agree about the innovation stifling though.
Re:Keep telling yourselves that (Score:3, Informative)
You're looking at it wrong. Google can't purchase Microsoft for Word, so they purchase Writely instead. Bam. Instant competition. Google can't purchase Apple, so they purchase Android instead. Bam. Instant competition. That's how they "compete". By either buying the market outright (e.g. Blogger) or by buying the upcoming competitor to a competitor they can't buy.
Microsoft, Oracle, and even IBM do the same thing.
I've also left out several direct competitors like DoubleClick, Outride, Kaltix, Sprinks, Genius Labs, Baidu, Picasa, Keyhole, and others. Google just shops the competition until they find the features they need, then integrate them into their products.
Re:What's their motto? (Score:3, Informative)
Well then you're in idiot.
'a' and 'i' aren't exactly near each other.
Re:they're not that big by most measures (Score:3, Informative)
Market cap doesn't mention any actual business activity, though; it's closer to what I was excluding ("public fame"), since it's solely a measure of how much value the investing public perceives a business to have, which is often wildly off the mark.
Re:The alternative is much worse (Score:1, Informative)
The point is that IE can't be replaced. WLM still opens IE you try to look at your inbox - even if you have something else set as your default browser. Windows has a method to open default browser with a certain URL, but they don't even use it in their own products!
can be replaced as soon as your new browser asks if you want to set it as the new default browser.
I'm not so sure about Mac - wouldn't surprise me either way.
Re:Must have? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:They're not big. (Score:3, Informative)
HA!
Do you know where Google Earth came from?
Youtube?
What about Google Voice?
Google NEVER buys anyone out!
Re:Hi... (Score:2, Informative)
Billy was not above poking fun at himself either, and it was an image he cultivated.
This is true. The show Pitchmen shows a lot of this, and it's quite funny to watch him joke about his legendary voice.
The fact that he, and his pitch style was so recognizable speaks volumes.
Do you mean "volumes" as in "books of information", or "volumes" as in "loud noises"? With Billy's pitch style, that could go either way.
Google has a relatively small head-count. (Score:4, Informative)
The part of Google that actually makes money is surprisingly small. The search engine staff was under 100 people until a few years ago, and about fifteen of them did all the hard parts. AdWords has more people, plus a sizable sales staff. But it's not huge, and it's smaller since Google closed some of their branch sales offices. At peak, Google had around 20,000 employees. Two years ago, they had about 12,000, and they could profitably shrink back to that level. They've been dumping excess contract employees for the last year.
The labor-intensive parts are mostly in the money drains - YouTube, GMail, etc.
Re:The alternative is much worse (Score:2, Informative)
> How about the Notepad Text Editor segment? How about the TCP/IP stack segment? How about the disk defragging segment? Should all of those be ripped out of the operating system?
The only reason they put a browser into Windows at first was to kill Netscape.
Also, it's not just a matter of shipping a browser. If they had ONLY done that, it might not be so bad. But they have stolen the default browser setting, forced ISVs to ship IE rather than allowing them to customize it, made IE non-standards compliant (this goes both ways: Netscape made several incompatible extensions of the specification, too), and did a lot of other things.
It's not just one thing they did in isolation. They didn't just ship a browser. They declared all-out war on a competitor and used their market-distorting power to kill them. And now they lobby the government to keep their power.
That's not right. If all they did was ship a free browser, I don't think we'd complain that much.
Re:The alternative is much worse (Score:1, Informative)
Create a shortcut on your desktop called www.slashdot.org and make the target www.bbc.co.uk.
Now go to www.slashdot.org in IE.
Now tell me it's not fucked up.
Re:The alternative is much worse (Score:2, Informative)
Apple holds NO monopolies of ANY kind, your argument fails.
Its amazing how people forget the order and timing of the events in question. When looking at the timeline, there is NO DOUBT Microsoft abused its monopoly in the browser space. Microsoft was VERY late to the browser games, and almost missed the internet entirely.
Re:The alternative is much worse (Score:3, Informative)
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/810565 [microsoft.com]
Re:Must have? (Score:3, Informative)
The post office? (Score:3, Informative)
Ever heard of FedEx?
Re:That's Weird, Because Fiscally ... (Score:2, Informative)
In a few weeks, they'll finish their bankruptcy and that 677 million in market cap is guaranteed to drop to 0.
+5 Informative? Jeebus. $677 million represents what people are actually willing to pay for the stock. If it were "guaranteed" to drop to zero in a couple weeks, nobody would be willing to pay anything for it. From the very fact that the stock price is above zero, you can imply that many people disagree with your statement strongly enough that they are willing to put their money where their mouth is. Presumably they are expecting some nonzero chance of GM emerging from bankruptcy after discharging some debts and obligations e.g. with the help of government decree.
Feel free to short the stock if you disagree that strongly. You'll be helping bring the stock to (in your opinion) its true value, and as a side effect you'll make some "guaranteed" money. Good luck.