Just Copying Someone's Technology Isn't Enough
from the much-more-going-on dept
When discussing patent related stories, people often claim that without patents, copycat companies would simply copy everything and put the original creators out of business. There are a number of reasons why this isn't true (and plenty of historical evidence that it's not true at all), but for a good example of this at work, just take a look at Google. Google is by far the dominant search engine out there, and it's only been growing. It was first to market with a quality search engine, but many studies have pointed out that Yahoo and Microsoft have both caught up (and possibly passed) Google in terms of search quality. And yet, Google keeps growing. There are plenty of reasons for this, from Google's "celebrity" (as the article implies) to Google's clean interface to people generally trusting Google more than those other providers (to date, Google has done much less to piss off most people). None of those things have anything to do with the technology alone. There's this view among patent system supporters that the technology is everything, when it's really just a component in terms of what makes a business. Copying the technology is one thing, but there are advantages to being first to market, executing well, treating customers right and building a reputation. Just copying someone's technology won't get you very far on most of those other points, and shows that focusing solely on patents as a competitive advantage is unlikely to get you very far.
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Filed Under: execution, marketing, reputation, technology
Companies: google
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So again: the point is that "copyable" stuff (a search engine technology) has less value than "un-copyable" stuff (unique and quality customer service).
Think the DRM Fascists will see the parallels?
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Patents are for losers! Just kidding, but it does point out the obvious, the product can be produced by anyone, and this is true in most businesses, but taking care of the people, those that bring you bread and butter, is what separates men from boys.
Some monopolistic companies should learn from this, instead of just copying the product itself.
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For your next article title it Mac versus PC, then just babble about the weather and never remotely even touch on anything about Mac or PC.
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Lame lame lame
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Re: Lame lame lame
Personally I can only take so much 'dirt' before I must take a year long hiatus to meditate and recover. Maybe there's a good reason why this site hasn't grown beyond a hundred or so posters in over 10 years of operation.
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Really?
Really? I always find these services horrible for searching, especially MSN which never seems to find what I want and has really intrusive advertising. Google still does the job for me, I rarely have issues finding what I want and it's easy to ignore ads.
That's why I use it, not some lemming-style brand loyalty.
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Re: Really?
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Re: Re: Really?
ahf forgot to finish this one. I meant to say, perhaps you use Google for "plenty of reasons," not just one that is listed there.
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Altavista
No, Alta Vista was pretty good but Google was better.
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My Employer Copied/Stole Other's Technology
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No. It's Quality.
All the search engines actually increased their quality by the about the same percent, relative to themselves. Google was already higher, thus a 10% improvement translates to a larger actual number for them. Both MS and Yahoo have actually lost ground over the last year.
And none of them have copied each other's tech. The fact that they are in the same business, returning a search result, does not mean that the tech behind the result is the same.
A small amount of difference in quality (and it's not small) results in a large market share difference because the cost of switching between them is zero.
Like the way people switch their radio or TV when the programming quality drops (ie: a commercial comes on). Cost of switching is zero. So many do. Which means the consumption of commercials has dropped. The correct response? Raise the entertainment quality of the commercials. Dropping the entertainment value of the shows has already been tried by the broadcast networks. And people switched to cable.
Online search is exactly the same. Google wins because they have a better product. Their product is backed up with patented technology. Just like traditional media is backed up with copyright.
The problems are that patents and copyrights are out of step with the modern world. Both should have been decreased in length.
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Re: No. It's Quality.
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Intellectual property
However, we have adopted them because of various philosophical viewpoints (most notably a utilitarian/economic incentive perspective). These viewpoints state that the principle objective of IP is to PROMOTE NEW AND IMPROVED WORKS, not to reward creators.
How do we do this? We grant special rights to creators. these rights protect the creators and their creations, but many times stifle other innovation (because others are prevented from using it). So, there remains this "tension" between society's desire to encourage invention, and the rights that we need to grant to encourage innovation.
Now a key point to understand is that sometimes, we don't need to give rights to encourage innovation (but we still do anyway). Google would still come up with new stuff, even if it didn't have some kind of governmental protection. Google's encouragement is the market response that it will have. Google is big enough, and savvy enough, to back up its invention in the marketplace.
Another example would be copyright protection. If we did away with this, would we see the death of creative expression? Would authors, musicians, and artists suddenly say "well, there's nothing in this for me now, I'll go do something else"? In truth, a few of them probably would, but the vast majority see the creation itself as the reward, and we would still see new books, songs, and paintings, etc.
Back to computers. The giants of the industry don't need encouragement to innovate, the market does that for them; if they don't continually improve, then they RIP. It is the small guys that need this protection, otherwise they and their innovations would be swallowed by the giants.
Put this simply, IP seems great. But just watch techdirt for a while and you can see a lot of the problems that arise: patents being granted willy-nilly (the statutory requirements are actually fairly hard to meet), "patent trolls" whose business is litigation and the threat of litigation, and frivolous lawsuits based upon copyright protection.
Can anybody else come up with a better plan; one that gives reasonable rights to works of creation, while balancing the other issues involved?
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Re: Intellectual property
For example, I operated a semi-popular wiki that get hundred of unique visitors everyday but I do not relies on copyright's monopoly privilege.
There is an entire sector of the software industry that does not relies on copyright. Granted they do use copyright, but they do not use monopoly power of copright. Rather, they use copyright that essentially forever make them fair game to the competition and reinforce the free market's dynamic.
This is not how copyright is meant to be used, but it does promoted the intended purpose, innovation in the marketplace. Practically, they did it the old fashion way, by competing with each other.
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Re: Intellectual property
After a couple of years tied up in court, the little guy wins the case but his technology is now old, his resources have been tied up so nothing new is in the pipeline. He won the case but he couldn't grow his biz and is effectively out of biz at the end of the case. What a win.
I don't see IP as much protection.
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MSN is horrible
and excuse me if I'm wrong but I always though yahoo came in before google....
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MSN?
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The show is named after the famed Thomas Edison, called "The Gramophones", but does nothing to honor this american hero.
Music Industry:
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Critical Mass and Association
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Google is still more powerful than the competition, offers many more ways to search, and well, we're not stuck using a "newb" interface that looks ugly as hell (*cough* yahoo *cough*).
But hey, it's to be expected.. when you rule your world, others try to bring you down with their false claims and biased reports. Free speech is cool right?
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Why Google rules IMO
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Re: Why Google rules IMO
You have to use MSN to find Google? Just want to confirm, I'm a little confused by that sentence--why not just type google.com in IE's address bar? By the way, Firefox is always at getfirefox.com , if you want to cut out [what sounds to me like] two extra steps.
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Re: Re: Why Google rules IMO
Lazy typing fingers I guess. I can do most of that with 6-7 keystrokes, I'm a mouse intensive surfer, and I have to let go of the mouse to type.
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How long would it take to reverse engineer a new drug from a pharmaceutical company?
Google, not sure. The new drug? About a week. What first mover advantage would you have? A week?
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MSN & Yahoo DID NOT copy google.
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Leaning away from Yahoo and towards Google
I have to concur with general opinion above regarding MSN - I haven't found it useful.
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