Techdirt Podcast Episode 156: Disrupting Google

from the startup-strategies dept

Tue, Feb 27th 2018 1:30pm — Leigh Beadon

When a tech company is huge and dominant, it can feel like competing with them is impossible. Worse still, it can sometimes feel like innovating is impossible, since they might just step in and take over as soon as someone executes on a good idea. Once upon a time this was how startups felt about Microsoft, while today it's more likely to be Google or Facebook. But no company, no matter how mighty, is immune to being disrupted — and figuring out how is the subject of this week's episode.

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Filed Under: disruption, podcast
Companies: google

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Anonymous Coward, 27 Feb 2018 @ 2:28pm

Google and censorship: mission-creep and knee-jerks
It seems to be a general rule that the bigger and more dominant internet companies become, the more they push their weight around to censor 'speech' that they (or the powers that be) don't like and punish people associated with that speech. We've all seen reports of this time and again with a wide variety of market-dominant "platforms" such as Ebay, Paypal, Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Patreon, and of course Google through the company's increasingly hands-on --and hilariously ham-fisted-- censorship of its search results, resulting in widespread collateral damage yet leaving open gaping loopholes.

https://medium.com/@douglasmatthewstewart/google-censors-guns-removes-shopping-results-5cf 9c7a3d995

https://twitter.com/nickmon1112/status/968509121363415042/photo/1
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- Anonymous Coward, 27 Feb 2018 @ 7:37pm
  
  Re: Google and censorship: mission-creep and knee-jerks
  Not matter how much you beg Hamilton’s not coming back to you. I am sorry for your romantic loss of course. But this is just undignified.
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Anonymous Coward, 27 Feb 2018 @ 3:41pm

About to listen now, but thought I'd share my ideas on the topic beforehand.

I've been considering and even experimenting for a while now, and my conclusion is that to compete with Google you have to change the rules of the game. And the best rule change appears to me to be to make search more specific to specific topics. That's because this specialization allows new search engines to differentiate themselves and offer a better experience, provided certain roadblocks are cleared out of their way.
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- Anonymous Coward, 27 Feb 2018 @ 4:52pm
  
  Response to: Anonymous Coward on Feb 27th, 2018 @ 3:41pm
  And yes, it turns out this was discussed in the podcast.
  
  If I were to review it, lots of interesting discussion (per usual) but takes a while to come to any conclusions. But they noticed that themselves.
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Leigh Beadon (profile), 27 Feb 2018 @ 6:43pm

Clipped Ending
Folks who already tried to listen all the way through may have noticed the ending of the podcast was cut off! Our apologies - we've fixed that now. You only missed a few minutes, but you can re-download it if you want to hear the rest.
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orbitalinsertion (profile), 27 Feb 2018 @ 6:57pm

Well if people who do actually innovate didn't sell out to the giants constantly, there would be a more diverse ecosystem, and more competition.
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