Comment by Over2Chars
19 days ago
I agree, I think it's not a deep insight, but Thiel notes (in his 'zero to one' speech he gave) that Google actively pretends not to be a search advertising monopoly, and instead pretends to be a competitive technology company, in a wide range of technology fields, to "hide" their monopoly.
Thiel is openly advocating monopolies, and says competition is for losers.
I think he's just calling GOOG out for their marketing, and noting their market strategy to deflect attention away from their monopoly.
I, for one, have never heard anyone publicly mention this besides Thiel. Have you?
I'm not sure I buy Thiel's argument becuase plenty of their non-search businesses such as Google Cloud, GSuite, Waymo, and Verily have become pretty successful in their own right, and vertical integration is another form of monopoly that tends to cracked down on.
If I had a monopoly on sugar and traded in silver and healthcare, I would still have a monopoly on sugar.
Yea but diversification is a critical business strategy not just a marketing ploy
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Check out the big blue box. I think Thiel's point is spot on:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1093781/distribution-of-...
Vertical integration is very proconsumer as it reduces successive markups.
Until they drive competitors out of business, and then it's not. Much like the horizontal integration of, say, Walmart.
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I never had the illusion that Google makes their money from Pixel phones... It was always advertising.
You are keenly insightful in this age of the willingly blind.
Their technology products are free/low cost ways to get you to voluntarily opt in to their surveillance advertising model.