Comment by xp84
6 days ago
Not OP, but the idea is that when split from their massive parents, these products would be much more vulnerable to competition in a way they are very safe from it today. It's not an insurmountable task to create, say, a video-sharing site, or a chat program. Better versions of YouTube and MS Teams could be made with 20 developers in 18 months. However, those would be suicidal uses of capital today, since who's going to actually buy "CorpChat" when Microsoft bundles Teams, and Salesforce bundles Slack? Who's going to want to host their content on a new video sharing site if Google can easily make sure YouTube will always outrank it in Search, and could even ensure the videos don't play right in Chrome?
All products which lose money and are propped up by money firehoses from other parts of their dominant owners, are products that enjoy an unfair advantage in the market leaving less marketshare (often strikingly less) for anyone who might be better.
> All products which lose money and are propped up by money firehoses from other parts of their dominant owners, are products that enjoy an unfair advantage in the market leaving less marketshare (often strikingly less) for anyone who might be better.
Is it your opinion that every product is monetizable, and should be if that would make it self-sufficient? Do you not feel some would just get killed entirely if they couldn't be subsidized through other products?
Good question.
I feel that when a company is in a super dominant, dare I say monopoly position (Google Search is the most obvious example) with one of its product lines, it usually is destructive to free markets when they aim the money firehose at another, money-losing product. It does this by driving out competition against that second product, which results in less choice for consumers.
I don't think it's necessarily a problem when a company that isn't a monopoly subsidizes another product. I agree that's pretty normal.
I don't feel this answered my question to be honest.
> It does this by driving out competition against that second product
Again, we come back to my question: what about when that product would not make money on its own?