Posts Tagged ‘Monopolies’
Google Posts Up on GPS Navigation December 17th, 2009
Read this article today, and it got me thinking. The essence is that Google is moving into the realm of offering true-form, turn by turn, GPS navigation on their Android mobile platforms. This is slightly different from what’s been available before with Google Maps, on everything from iPhones to Blackberrys. The new development comes in the fact that what Google is offering up is a free service, with turn by turn navigation, and audio directions that approaches territory, which until now, only played host to services which require payment from companies like Garmin and TomTom.
On one hand, it appears as if Google is offering up another service here for us to consume and enjoy, but on the other, it’s important to take a minute and look at what they stand to gain, and more importantly what the market stands to lose from the continuation of Google taking forays into so many different digital service markets.
The huge thing about Google, is that as a company, they’ve got so much money, it’s become really easy for their developers to explore new possibilities and can introduce a free product or service into a market where before there were a few companies ravenously competing for the consumers of that particular service. It’s essentially the Walmart debate of the digital age, except instead of building a large retail empire on “low prices”, Google is building an enormous web empire on “free”.
I find myself wondering if there is in fact a price assigned to free in this case. In 20 years, will Google have permeated so many different markets, offering quality products for “free” that they’ve run the normal market for those products into the ground? If so, will the inevitable death of competition lead to lower quality products for the consumer?
Leave something in the comments, I’d love to know what you guys think about this one.
Tags: Google, IMS-201, Monopolies
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