About why Google’s monopoly is better than Microsoft’s monopoly

    At first I didn’t want to publish my next opus on Habré, but one of the latest materials did not allow me to resist.

    The "moderate apologists of the middle ground", which as arguments against Microsoft, set off a counterexample - supposedly a monopoly of Google, with the rhetorical question "why Google is possible and Microsoft not", lead me to such thoughts. I will put forward, perhaps, a controversial thesis that Google is really possible, but Microsoft is really not.

    Perhaps, to begin with, Google, although it occupies a leading position in its market, is not far as indicative as Microsoft. It is enough to give the numbers (http://www.3dnews.ru/news/rezultati_google_v_3_kvartale_dohodi_virosli_na_46-269977/). In 2007, its share in search engines was 57% of all searches. Other services, such as Gmail, Google Reader, etc. they occupy a much smaller percentage among competitors. If you compare it with 98% of the share of Windows on desktops and 70% in the server market , not to mention the other slots, where Microsoft sticks its nose (more on that below).

    So we see very well that Google is conducting a fairly honest competition in the field of Internet services: it wins somewhere, it loses somewhere, it has competitors (Yahoo, the same Microsoft on a global scale, and a bunch of individual companies in particular), moreover, it conducts its activities in its field (Internet services), usually not creeping out beyond its borders (GPhone - while the case is unique, it is aimed precisely at maintaining and developing Internet services, i.e. not for competition with Nokia & Samsung & etc. ) And, interestingly, Google here (in the market of Internet services) is really an innovatorand you can’t argue with that. The first gave a massive impetus to the development of AJAX, first developed the idea of ​​transferring off-line products to on-line (Google Docs, etc.), the first developed the contextual advertising market (AdWords), first came up with the idea of ​​showing the world taken from the satellite via the Internet service, opened a unique statistics service (Analytics - not in terms of its technical stuffing, but in terms of marketing weight), in the end I realized, and began to act towards the fact that the future lies in mobile phones. If I made a mistake somewhere in the championship, then the laurels of popularization in any case belong to Google. And each of these examples subsequently bashfully copied Microsoft, in pursuit.
    With Microsoft, the situation is radically different. She is trying to get all the areas of the IT market and is fighting on all fronts. The list goes on and on: the OS is a pure monopoly, direct competition with Google (MSN, MSN Virtual Earth, Gatineau), development tools and programming languages ​​(Visual Basic, Visual Studio, ASP, .NET, etc.), office suites, games, telephones (Zune), computer games, document management systems and business applications, DBMS and servers (IIS, MSSQL, Windows 2003), browsers (IE), media content (Microsoft DRM / Media Player vs Apple DRM / iTunes) ... Name any a serious niche in IT and look (in MSN?) for the name of the product from Microsoft in this niche. As soon as an interesting product comes out, they immediately release their "competitor", redistributing ideas and niches from Apple, Google (here - just completely ridiculous). They stick their nose into all the cracks.

    But it’s lyrics, too folding and too tight, where Google is beautiful and Microsoft is ugly; there are things for which Microsoft can be respected, and Google does not like. Okay, their right - they are competing with everyone, and to hell with them. What is the problem? Obviously, they are too active in using their monopoly position in the market, promoting their own products in a tree-like manner. Here, I think, everything is simple - we get the OS market, then we immediately rivet and sell development tools for it, and a bunch of other software; we set the default browser on the OS, and in the blink of an eye - 95% of the users (there were such numbers) the OS becomes the users of this browser, and now there is a field for creativity: we do not follow the standards (ergo, we further consolidate the popularity) turn on unique functions that are not available to other browsers, and write web interfaces for them, etc.

    Thus, this leads to economic expansion, when the IT world, as in a vicious circle, cannot go anywhere: they don’t switch to other OSs, because there is no software for them, there is no software, because there are few users. Microsoft exercises varying degrees of control both at the parent level (OS, development tools) and at the child level (browser, office suites, etc), building an ideal monopolistic paradigm favorable for maintaining a monopoly at all levels. The consequences are price control, control of closed proprietary protocols. interfaces for which Microsoft sells licenses that cost the money we pay (I will refer to the famous article by Leonid Kaganov) In other words, the goal of Microsoft (like any other commercial organization) is to maximize profits. And she does this by achieving maximum market isolation. And judging even by the latest facts, it does it very dirty - http://habrahabr.ru/blog/linux/29823.html . And enough has been written above that is at stake in the battle between Microsoft & Mandriva. If it’s a programming language, then its own, if its databases, then its own - all its own, Microsoft never uses other people's technologies in its development. If they lack some kind of technology, they will take it and do it. And then on it will build what was required in the beginning.

    Such activity hinders the development of science and technology, since Microsoft closes all its standards, patents them (remember only this fake noise about the fact that Linux allegedly violates Microsoft patents). Do not forget, the share of MS on desktops is 98%, so any standard is potentially as dominant as the OS itself. This leads to the fact that other developers have to develop the bike again, instead of moving on.

    Why is Google better here? Yes, Google has a high market share in [one] of its area, and it is gaining momentum and becoming even more popular, but ... with increasing momentum, the IT market is getting better, since Google does not supplant other technologies, but syndicates them, absorbs them in itself, making better not only their products without an unnecessary increase in labor costs (and, therefore, an unnecessary increase in cost), but also gives people their development. So it was with Google Maps - they just handed out their APIs to everyone and allowed them to create whatever they wanted with their cards, absolutely free of charge. I’m silent about the number of OpenSource developments that Google gives to people: Google Web Toolkit, Tesseract, Guice, Java Collections Framework, gflags, perftools, sparsehash, ctemplate, and much, much more ... As well as dozens of interesting services,

    It is at Google’s headquarters that the KDE4 presentation will take place, Google is constantly standing up for OpenSource products in the fight against proprietary software in general, and Microsoft in particular , Google is promoting third-party free and OpenSource products , is actively promoting the Firefox browser (standards-compliant), and provides legal support to various OpenSource organizations.

    Google does not have a single paid product, they take the maximum money from users for expanding their capabilities, all of us pay only for Google partners who earn with it. Potentially, there are rumors that there will be a number of paid products for business from Google on the market, but this is a completely different story.

    How wonderful it was said by nForce comradenForce:
    “With all the minuses of the monopoly - Google, obviously, chooses methods that are more socially pleasant to us - I feel the same way when Amarok crashes - and they politely apologize to me and ask them to help them. Google is a monopoly with a human face.

    There are the same reasons why * nix will become, IMHO, popular - you are treated as a person, not as a client, with a refined smile and money-hungry eyes ... and personal attitude - in our technogenic age - is a luxury that costs much more than money and material goods ”


    Google manages to gain weight for the actual votes of users, since it does not achieve the market by blocking all channels-outputs, giving no alternatives, but by a simple scheme: it helps people, people help Google, and therefore Google is getting bigger. And this, I believe, is a real, deserved monopoly, for which the user made a choice, and not even with his wallet, but with his reverence. Google just makes its good products, and does not block the oxygen to others. People use Google not because they don’t have the opportunity (physical, psychological) to go somewhere, but because they like to do it. Google’s monopoly will not hurt anyone: with this model, fair competition will always live, because it is based on trustusers. So - on their sympathies. If Google products are more popular, it is only because they (beware - better) are more popular with users, and not because Google does not leave another option. In the end, Google’s monopoly will never force anyone to pay more, since it doesn’t need user money at all.

    On the other hand, it’s clear why Google promotes open and free products: it is not in the software market as such, but directly in the services market . It matters to him what is on users' computers: IE or Firefox, Windows or Linux, it is important for them that this is more accessible and more convenient for users. Those. this means. It is important for him that people use his services, how will they do it and why? It doesn’t matter, but you need to make them as accessible as possible. And free is the most affordable. Therefore, they are promoting.

    I respect Microsoft for their outstanding marketing and political talent, for their achievements, but do I like it? Not. Respect and love are two different things, and they do not always intersect. They are great in their achievements, but do not shut off oxygen. However, there are opinions that they have already been depleted. But because they are no less dangerous.

    PS I apologize for possible errors and typos.

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