Why Google is the most dangerously anticompetitive company today
/As I continue to see Google portrayed in the media as a sort of benevolent "company of the people", I'm more and more concerned about what Google's expansion and business model really means to the future of tech.
On the surface, it seems great: Google makes useful products like Google Search, Google Maps, Gmail and Android, and lets everyone use them for free! Sure, they collect your personal information and sell it to advertisers, and show you ads wherever / whenever possible, but it seems like a small price to pay right? And a lot of Google fans I know even have the opinion that all software should be free, since their usage and attention should be exchange enough if a company (like Google) can monetize them.
Here's why the "everything should be free" concept that Google loves to encourage is horrible for everyone but Google (and maybe Facebook):
1) Making software, or anything really, costs money. Businesses need to make that money back in order to invent, maintain, and improve their products
2) In order to successfully make a profit on software or hardware based on advertising alone, it requires tens or hundreds of millions of users, extremely sophisticated software to manage the advertising and tracking, and relationships with lots of advertisers. It's a business in and of itself.
3) Therefore, to offer free software, apps, services, etc. a new company would have to have a large ad infrastructure, sales force, and user base. For a startup trying to focus on a new product itself, this is nearly impossible.
4) Therefore Google can and does undercut every competing product and service by pricing theirs for free, and making it nearly impossible for anyone else to compete in the realm of online docs, maps, voice call handling, online video, search, email, RSS feed management, travel info / ticket pricing, etc. etc.
To further compound this problem, Google tends to acquire companies who have a product in a market Google isn't already competing in. Google then makes their product free (with advertising) and starts the process of shutting out other competitors and usually fails to innovate much on the original product anymore (I'm looking at you, Google Voice, Google Docs, Google Reader, Gmail, and more).
All the while, Google continues to build up more and more advertising dominance while making money on their only real product - users who can be targeted with advertising across multiple interests and channels.
I don't know about you, but I'm not interested in a world filled with mediocre (yep, sorry, most of Google's non-search, non-maps products are pretty bland and mediocre) free apps that push any other competing products out of the market because competing products can't charge nothing for their software and services.
I hope to see new business models, coalitions of competitors pooling their users and resources, and government regulation start to break Google's dangerous anticompetitive run in the markets it operates in. Then maybe we'll see faster and better innovation in online documents, email, video and voice solutions, and true competition starting to make a comeback in these areas.