> Well, Chrome took over market share pretty easily when it released something better.
It certainly didn't hurt that they promoted the hell out of it on all of their market dominant properties. (As well as the, then common, practice of paying to have it included it in freeware downloads of all kinds; which to your point is more subsidy than anything else)
I can see your point about R&D. When a company is more profitable/less competitive, there is an ability to do more of the open ended research that can lead to great things that aren't closely related to the company business. But does that justify the lack of competition that results? The consumer harm is difficult to quantify, of course, because consumers are generally not paying in dollars for these services; but maybe search competition would result in fewer ads and a more clear separation between ads and found content, which may be more useful. You could also consider that to some degree, advertising costs drive up the price of goods sold through those ads, and therefore the lack of competition in ads may cause consumer harm in that way (but, of course that's a tenuous argument, a lot of companies will spend their ad budget regardless)
It certainly didn't hurt that they promoted the hell out of it on all of their market dominant properties. (As well as the, then common, practice of paying to have it included it in freeware downloads of all kinds; which to your point is more subsidy than anything else)
I can see your point about R&D. When a company is more profitable/less competitive, there is an ability to do more of the open ended research that can lead to great things that aren't closely related to the company business. But does that justify the lack of competition that results? The consumer harm is difficult to quantify, of course, because consumers are generally not paying in dollars for these services; but maybe search competition would result in fewer ads and a more clear separation between ads and found content, which may be more useful. You could also consider that to some degree, advertising costs drive up the price of goods sold through those ads, and therefore the lack of competition in ads may cause consumer harm in that way (but, of course that's a tenuous argument, a lot of companies will spend their ad budget regardless)