Tag Archives: Monolopy

Business, Technology

Microsoft OS & Google Cloud Platform: Owning the Shelf Space

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Google at this phase in their business and technology life cycle reminds me of Microsoft, as the trailblazers, when Microsoft was building all their products, and continually trying to own the shelf space of product sets in their desktop platform.  Now that the tides have turned, it seems their cloud platform is growing, and Google’s growth is dominant. Not only are they building out the architecture platform, but they are filling out their shelf space, building out their platform with their products, the mantra, building out the products that fit in their platform, with a preference to build verses buy, acquiring when necessary. The parallelism with Microsoft, and the desktop in the 80s and 90s scary in it’s cyclical nature.

Although Microsoft ‘virtually’ owned, and arguably continues to dominate the desktop, thick client, although loosing ground to a diversity of platforms ever since Red Hat brought Unix popularity, and Macintosh continued to grow in it’s popularity.  Look what happened at Microsoft, lots of stock options, lots of cashing in, and eventually becoming unpopular associated with a passion for their oligopoly, or as the antitrust put it, monopoly in the market of the desktop, owning the desktop platform.  Could that now happen with Google, and will we see the stock split, and other competitive offerings occur, forced by an anti-trust case by the government?  Ouch.  Well, there is no doubt, Google’s cloud platform and product set is growing.  Good for them, and good for us as consumers.  The difference, APIs, and expandability with the Google platform.  Has Google learned the harsh lessons of Microsoft, allowing the extensibility.  Will they run into barriers with partners, upgrades to the APIs, greed, and a movement to own the shelf space.

We will see.  Google, keep your cloud APIs extendable, expose as many APIs as possible, allowing third parties to easily compete and dominate the products within your architecture, even create open source code to your own products within the cloud platform, and promote as many third party products as possible leveraging all of the APIs.

The one thing I have seen so far, which is not a great sign, is trying to incorporate 3rd party products into your cloud where you have competitive offering.  I’d like to see Google step up, for example, and create widgets to WordPress to compete with their blogging platform.  Actively look to plug in third party products into your cloud architecture, avoiding the animosity third parties might have, and there won’t be a need for anti-trust down the road.  Europe is already jumping on that train with anti-trust.  I’d devise a group within Google that looks to integrate, and partner with small to mid size companies, and proactively include them into your platform.  Don’t give anyone a reason to target Google as a monopoly.

See also the article, THE GOOGLE INVESTOR: Google’s FTC Interrogation Not Analogous To Microsoft’s Antitrust History

Business, Finance, Politics, Technology

Is the Apple and Samsung Battle Really about Android verse iOS?

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Is this just a question of Samsung verse Apple, or iOS verse Android, but Apple is not battling the U.S. company, Google, and Google is not defending it’s partner because it has its own internally acquired hardware vendor, Motorola Mobility?

Since Samsung is a foreign company, should it be protected under United States Antitrust regulations, and if so, do they apply?  If by taking Samsung out of the U.S. marketplace, would Apple monopolize the marketplace?  Is it a grey area, the current number of mobile hardware manufacturers, relative to their share in the market, and how much control Apple would have shaping the U.S. marketplace if Samsung was removed?  Are the mobile hardware and/or OS manufactures an Oligopoly or a Monopoly?  As an example article, here is a brief statement on Monopolies and Oligopolies, and examples of Oligopolies. U.S Antitrust Laws could apply, but this decision should at least be presented to the U.S. Supreme Court, and possibly in a different context.  Is this a hardware manufacturer issue, or a mobile Operating System issue?

I continually see news articles like, Apple wants ban on Samsung products, even more damages.  Here is a solid paper from a Law student at Fordham regarding Oligopolies and Antitrust Law.  It started to make me think, along with another article from CNN Money, Android races past Apple in smartphone market share.  In the article it mentions how RIMM and Nokia / Symbian fell in market share significantly, and the top two competitors are Apple and Android.  For me, these articles raised a few questions.  Clearly RIMM and Nokia/Symbian differ in form factor and feature capabilities, and have been outpaced by Apple and Android.  Google purchasing Motorola Mobility seemed to enhance the lack of Google’s interest in backing other hardware manufacturers.  My first question is what is the difference between generic drugs and name brand drugs, and this situation, and how do Generics persist in the marketplace?  Is this battle really Android versus Apple, but Google is keeping an arm’s length because they have their own hardware manufacturer internally?  Second, are every single innovation adopted by one OS and/or hardware manufacturer, e.g. mutithreaded / multitasking support, all up for debate, fines, and closed the ability to compete in the marketplace.  This situation smells of geopolitics, and how American Capitalism marketplace may be leveraging some form of Protectionism.  Again, this case, and possibly Samsung should partner with another Android OS partner, possibly outside the U.S., to transform this case to the U.S. Supreme Court, and make this about the Operating Systems rather than hardware.