[johbjo]

Let's say the electric company wants to start a restaurant. So they shut the power to the competing restaurants in the neighbourhood. Everyone agrees it would be outrageous.

Now, what about Apple dictating payment policy on apps in the app store?

Google premiering their own services in the results? Forcing their own apps onto all Android devices, impossible to remove?

These platforms turn themselves into natural monopolies, and therefore they can not be treated as "private companies". Decentralisation would be a technical solution, but meanwhile I think regulation is what will happen.

[cbolton]

This analogy seems way off to me. It completely misses the fact that Google is doing what it's supposed to do which is giving the user the information they're looking for.

I don't think cutting power is giving the customer (restaurants) or users (not clear in the analogy) what they want.

It's true that with flight search, competitor results are de-emphasized, but as far as I'm concerned Google could even drop them entirely, showing only their internal results if they want to. It's answering the user query, and if the user is unsatisfied they can trivially switch to another source of information.

To make a better analogy, consider that flight search is a specialized version of what Google does more generally. So:

Electric company "EC" wants to start providing DC current to interested customers, so they show the option prominently in their communications with their customers.

This is a tragedy for the existing DC industry because "EC" has the best reputation (highest reliability) in the general electricity industry so most people will first consider them for a DC contract even if they're not necessarily the best for DC power. Still, unhappy customers can easily switch to another DC provider.

[titzer]

> It completely misses the fact that Google is doing what it's supposed to do which is giving the user the information they're looking for.

It used to work that way in the beginning. Now it steers you to whatever the highest bidder wants, whatever their massive opaque ad-revenue-optimizing AI thinks is best, which incidentally seems to be SEO-optimized, pre-digested and ad-laden portals into a whole other ecosystem of in-your-face click farms and garbage results stabbing you in the eyeballs.

Were you not aware of the massive conflict of interest that a search engine with ads represents...from the very beginning?

[solaceb]

>It's true that with flight search, competitor results are de-emphasized,

In what sense is Google a competitor with flight/travel businesses?

Google is an advertising company.

[ashneo76]

Are there many options to Google? That is where the example breaks down

[swiley]

Making the App Store a public utility instead of preventing Apple from forcing their users to do things is absolutely the wrong response because it ensures Apple will be in power forever.

[ben_w]

They have the capacity to be bad, but for example Apple (who are in a similar place WRT this) started with apps you can’t remove and has now made most of them removable; and last time I looked (a while ago now) many unremovable Android apps came from the phone vendor.

I’m all in favour of keeping companies under a close eye to make sure they don’t become an abusive monopoly — my naïve political philosophy is that power should be conserved, so the more e.g. economic power you have the less e.g. free market choice you should be allowed — but I don’t see in Google[0] what you see in them.

Also? If they can easily become a natural monopoly, decentralisation won’t solve anything in the long term.

[0] nor Apple, Netflix, Tesla, SpaceX, Twitter, or Microsoft; but that is how I see Facebook and Amazon.

[silasdavis]

> If they can easily become a natural monopoly, decentralisation won’t solve anything in the long term.

I don't follow the reasoning here.

[ben_w]

Saying something is naturally a monopoly is equivalent to saying it’s naturally not decentralised. They’re opposites.

[krisoft]

How do these services turn themselves into natural monopolies? There are many non-Apple phones available. There are also non-google search engines. What makes these natural monopolies then?

[Dah00n]

I'm not GP but a monopoly doesn't mean "we own the market everywhere" or "we have close to 100% of the market-share". We have this same discussion every time someone says monopoly..

Apple for example is a 100% monopoly in the app store. Likewise Google can be a monopoly on their search result page. It would have sounded insane some years back but today, when google search is a gatekeeper (like Facebook), they absolutely can.

You use the example of there being many non-Apple phones (while strictly true there are really only two players, iOS and Android). Can Apple use their power to kill your new innovative Fitness-From-Home app? They are absolutely in a position to do so. There's really not much else to it than that. Can Google strangle travel planner sites by showing flight plans in Google search results? Yes they can and a court would likely see this as abuse of a monopoly no matter if Google have 70% or 99% of the search engine market.

Or use the grandma test: Can you sell your Travel Planner Service to Grandma if Google starts adding the same info to Google search for "free"? Can you sell her a Fitness App for her iPhone if Apple shuts you out because they are going to launch their own iClone fitness app?

If Google goes from Search to Search/travel planner/hotel reservation/translator/and so on they are (ab)using their power to move into other areas and by shutting out competition they get more users thereby becoming a natural monopoly.

And as always happens when "The M" word is used and someone explains something we will have replies yelling Apple's AppStore isn't a monopoly, you can just use Android and we go around in circles.

[roenxi]

> Apple for example is a 100% monopoly in the app store.

Every physical store is a monopoly in their own space. It is hard to see that specific point being important.

The fact that Apple gate-keeps their store is also a major selling point of the iPhone. I don't want random people to be able to load random apps onto the phones of my family members. Having a programmable combined GPS/microphone/wallet/photo repository on hand all hours is already quite bad enough, there is an argument for curation here. If Apple ever starts making decisions that are unacceptable/grossly inferior to an alternative then there are other phones.

> Can you sell your Travel Planner Service to Grandma if Google starts adding the same info to Google search for "free"?

That isn't monopolistic behaviour, that is simply competition. Monopolistic is when Google won't allow your Travel Planner to enter their search index, or deranks it in favour of their alternative. If the competition is head-to-head then there isn't anything special about the situation.

[Dah00n]

>Every physical store is a monopoly in their own space.

This comparison is disingenuous. There aren't only two big physical stores (and maybe a handful small stores hardly no one knows about) in the entire world. If 99% of all physical stores were a Walmart or Costco you could compare but luckily this isn't so.

>The fact that Apple gate-keeps their store is also a major selling point of the iPhone.

That is beside the point. Just because something is a feature you (or most) like doesn't mean it is legal or not, monopoly or not. I'm not going to discuss if it is a good or bad feature because it would be off-topic.

>Monopolistic is when Google won't allow your Travel Planner to enter their search index, or deranks it in favour of their alternative.

Consider this: You have 100.000 result on Travel planners today with your site being number 3 and tomorrow you also have 100.000 results with your site being number 3 but now there's a big box above all the results that tells you what you were looking for (and the data might even come from your site). This is way worse than being de-ranked. That's not fair competition.

Another example: You have one of many Fitness Apps for iOS. For years Apple can see data on just what people search for, install, etc. and then one day they use all this data to create their own fitness app. Quickly your app would be irrelevant. Add to that that we have proof that Apple abuse their position by offering to buy a successful app and if refused they harass the publisher in different ways and create their own.

[roenxi]

> This comparison is disingenuous.

You say that, but then you make a completely different argument for why Apple is a monopoly. I'm just responding to what you've said, without using my well developed psychic powers to divine what different point you meant without saying.

You started your post with a point that is so weak that it is indefensible. Apple creating a virtual store and having a 100% monopoly in it simply isn't remarkable. That is how stores work, the store owner has near total control what is in the store to their benefit.

If your argument is that it is incomparable to a normal store then well ok, but you're going to need to argue that. A reasonable person could see Apple's store as comparable to an actual store. Apple very likely does.