I hate mod points on /.: I feel like I have a duty to give back and read the comments. Fortunately, sometimes there are little gems:
Poster 1: We’ve never truly seen Google behaving in an aggressive, competitive way
Poster 2: It’s ironic that creating a superior product at a low price (free, in this case) is no longer considered « competitive behaviour ». These days, you aren’t considered « competitive » unless you are engaging in anti-competitive behaviour (customer lock-in, standards pollution, collusion, etc).
Anti-competitive behaviour
I don’t entirely agree with that statement… Is there such a thing as to be competitive without cost AT ALL? In other words, if it doesn’t cost anyone anything to be “competitive”, how is this “competitiveness” being evaluated? Isn’t being competitive meaning that you can optimise your productivity with the least costs involved? Now there has to be cost whenever something is made right? One way or another, it is costing someone something somewhere. Now how can someone be productive without internalising the cost?
Now, I don’t think that making a product at a cost lower than your competitors is the problem here. But when you claim that you can make a product at a cost so much lower than others (or free) while your competitors cannot with no apparent logical explanation, there is place for suspicion. Either you are a step above everyone else and have found the perfect economic model for your product that nobody understands or that you are not internalising all the costs. Between the two, the second hypothesis seems more plausible. I think that is why when a situation like this happens, our first instinct is to think: “oh oh, someone is being anti-competitive here.” what you think?
Enlighten me, o wise one 🙂
The original post highlighted that there is a drift in the meaning of being competitive in the tech sector. Playing dirty is half expected. Competition, Adam Smith style, is not very glamorous and can even look like child’s play.
To evaluate cost, you must look at the entire business, “l’entreprise”. Google does provide a service for free. Providing this service does have costs. Google believe that theses costs are offset, most likely in part by the enourmous amount of goodwill their brand now carries.
The suspiciousness comes, maybe, from the fact that business use some revenue streams to subsidize other parts of their business. This could be illegal in some cases, it is however most often perfectly fine.
You say “can you be competitive without costs at all ?”: do you mean to the consumer? Or to your business? There are many “free” things for consumers, but there are few altruistic businesses.
You mention internalizing the costs. This might have a specific meaning in economy which I’m not aware of. But to me, if I market at a lower cost it means I think I have a way to still make a buck out of the deal somehow. For search engines, no cost to consumers seems to be the norm. Some experimented with the disgust threshold of web surfers toward advertising and sponsored content and portals. Some had other strategies for making ends meet. If I recall correctly, Altavista was at first meant in part to be a showcase for the capabilities of Digital’s computers.
To the outside eye, Google is providing a simple efficient free product. I remember when I started using it instead of Altavista. Yet someone got the impression that since they don’t make the headlines for being an aggressive competitive business.
To me they are the very essence of competitive: they “outsearch” their competitors.