[dnbgfher]

I think you're ignoring some very basic aspects of the ISP business and taking entirely the wrong lessons away from Google Fiber.

There is no cheap way to enter many/most/all of these markets. This isn't a world of cheap VC cash, because there is no chance of winning a lottery. Google of all people couldn't make this make sense. Sure, they would have had a better pitch if they were competing with incumbants who did things like block Google Search. Except it's even more trivial to unblock Google Search than it is to offer better service. This gets worse when you consider the possibility of not outright blocking, but intentionally slowing services.

So yeah. If Google couldn't make Google Fiber work, there is no way any new competitor is going to spring out of nowhere. The reality of the competition hasn't changed - incumbants are at a massive advantage even compared to most incumbants. Infrastructure is a massive barrier to newcomers, and any competitive aspects that can be used to differentiate one offer from another can be trivially and immediately matched by the incumbants. And in practice most all of the offers are difficult or impossible to really compare to each other in pratice, so most consumers have to rely mainly on the marketing materials and subjective experiences.

And again I've left out a whole other side of the issue, namely the relationships between ISPs and services.

This is just an awful system to rely on tradional markets. It uses expensive infrastructure, and the products are indifferentiable in any meaningful way over any period of time.

[simula67]

Google built a hugely successful Operating System ( Android ), Web browser ( Chrome ) etc because it was important to them that nobody won these platforms. If someone had monopoly control, they could squeeze Google for a lot of money through Traffic Acquisition Costs. Google currently pays potentially 100s of millions of dollars to Mozilla

The same applies to ISPs. Why do you think they are pushing for net neutrality ? Do you think it is out of the goodness of their hearts ? Without net neutrality Google might invest billions into building out a global, fast Internet infrastructure. They may have no choice but to do it, because it is strategic for them to own the entire ad delivery pipeline ( Computers/Phones/Tablets, Operating Systems, ISPs )

[SketchySeaBeast]

> Google built a hugely successful Operating System ( Android ), Web browser ( Chrome ) etc because it was important to them that nobody won these platforms.

Or was it important to them that they win? They certainly seem to have with Chrome at least. Does any company intentionally enter a space just to compete? Would google rather not absolutely win in the infrastructure as well?

[simula67]

I think it was important to them that someone else did not win. Winning it themselves was probably a bonus

> Would google rather not absolutely win in the infrastructure as well?

Probably, but it is up to it's competitors to try and prevent that.

If Google has no competitive advantage because of their other businesses it should not be a problem. But if it competes unfairly, fair competition laws should be applied

Either way, the customers could stand to benefit from increased investment

[rjf72]

Again I'd emphasize one point you made here: "And in practice most all of the offers are difficult or impossible to really compare to each other in practice, so most consumers have to rely mainly on the marketing materials and subjective experiences." This is arguably the single most important factor here. When companies are incapable of meaningfully distinguishing themselves, you're going to trend towards monopoly because there is no way for competitors to offer a compelling argument for their product. They can try to compete on price/performance but in most industries, certainly including telecoms, economy of scale means this is a losing battle.

Let's now imagine Comcast blocks Google due to payment from e.g. Bing. First off it's entirely possible that Comcast could not unblock Google even if they wanted to, since this would undoubtedly be breach of contract with Microsoft. But more importantly, this is something that would be perceived as a actively malicious action by the customer. They see the company is engaging in unreasonable behavior at the behest of third parties that visibly and meaningfully worsens their experience relative to other ISPs. Our critical point from above is no longer true!

This offers an opening for new competitors even if Comcast is able to unblock Google, because of the newfound ability for customers to compare services in practice. Compare this to slow speeds or high prices. These are not going to be seen as actively malicious and so the incumbent monopoly matching a competitor's prices is something that will be seen as a positive for the incumbent monopoly, as opposed to a non-negative.

----

So see how barriers to entry are not the fundamental problem here we can go reductio ad absurdum. Imagine we take something with very few barriers to entry - selling burgers. But let's apply so many rules and regulations that burgers become effectively identical -- same meat, same ingredients, same cooking, same standards of quality/freshness, same spices, etc, etc. You'd rapidly trend towards monopoly once again simply because the only way companies could compete would be on price and factors outside of the burger itself. But the biggest burger company would be capable of making burgers cheaper, faster, and more rapidly than anybody else - which means they would 'win', or be able to win if necessary, on every single competitive factor. In essence they become impossible to compete against and in simply trying to ensure high standards, you have created a monopoly.