Archive for December, 2009

While watching the latest episode of Diggnation yesterday, one of the hosts, Alex Albrecht, made an interesting point about Google becoming a monopoly by entering other industries. He said that because Google has so much money, they can go into another industry (in this example: turn-by-turn navigation) and do it for free without having to make money. This, he said, will push out the other competitors in the market (you can’t beat free), thus establishing Google as the sole company providing a service, which would lead to a degradation of quality of service. Part of his argument used the examples of Microsoft’s Xbox 360 and Sony’s PlayStation 3. The two leaders in the industry, he said, didn’t need to many money from video gaming, since they had other products that provided their cash (Microsoft’s OS and Office suite, Sony’s computers, TVs, etc.), so they could sell their consoles at a loss. While he made some interesting points (far more interesting than anything I’ve ever said after a few beers), and I agree that monopolies must always be avoided, Google currently is not the enemy. (more…)