Bill Gates Defends Google, Then Pans It

Bill Gates dropped by The New York Times on Monday to discuss his full-time job as head of the Gates Foundation, the world’s largest philanthropy, especially its work in global health and development.

Mr. Gates was on his way to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, where he is expected to announce an expansion of the foundation’s vaccine programs in poor nations.

But Mr. Gates is still the chairman and largest shareholder of Microsoft. And when asked, Mr. Gates had a few observations on the Internet search efforts of Microsoft and Google that were, by turns, acute, sardonic and tart.

Is Google a monopolist? “I wouldn’t call anyone a monopolist,” replied Mr. Gates, who has frequently been the target of that epithet over the years. He went on to say that historically companies that become “hyper-successful” invite government antitrust scrutiny, and he placed Google in that small, elite group of technology companies: AT&T, I.B.M. and Microsoft. Welcome to the club, Google. “If governments don’t care, that’s a bad sign,” Mr. Gates said.

Microsoft, the champion of the PC era, cemented its dominance because of “network effects” and “positive feedback loops,” economic terms that describe the snowballing benefits to front-runners in some markets.

Mr. Gates used those same terms to describe the challenge of trying to eat into Google’s big lead in Web search. The more people that use Google search, the more data the company has, and that data is the raw material for refining its search results further. And the greater its market share in search, the more advertisers want their ads placed on Google to reach the largest audience.

That, in turn, solidifies Google’s position as the dominant ad market, and strengthens its pricing power. “There are several positive feedback loops in this business, and they are particularly powerful,” Mr. Gates said.

Undaunted, Microsoft is investing heavily in search — “the last big investor” other than Google, Mr. Gates said, after Yahoo agreed last July to let Microsoft handle its search in return for payments. Gaining ground against Google, not catching it, is the current goal.

“We have brilliant people who dream of ways to increase our market share by 1 percentage point,” Mr. Gates said. (Google’s share of the American market was 66 percent in December, according to comScore, compared with under 11 percent for Microsoft.)

Mr. Gates declared himself unimpressed and a bit perplexed by Google’s recent threat to drop its search business in China to protest Chinese censorship of search after attacks apparently intended to spy on Gmail accounts of human-rights activists. “They’ve done nothing and gotten a lot of credit for it,” Mr. Gates said.

One may or may not agree with the laws in China, he said, but nearly all countries have some controversial laws or policies, including the United States. “What point are they making?” Mr. Gates asked. “Now, if Google ever chooses to pull out of the United States, then I’d give them credit.”

相關(guān)中文報(bào)道：蓋茨：微軟搜索目標(biāo)是站穩(wěn)腳根（摘自中文業(yè)界資訊站）

比爾-蓋茨在周一接受了《紐約時(shí)報(bào)》專(zhuān)訪，在被問(wèn)及Google是否是行業(yè)壟斷者時(shí)，蓋茨回答說(shuō)：“我不會(huì)把任何公司叫做壟斷者”。他認(rèn)為，一般來(lái)說(shuō)非常成功的公司才會(huì)遭到政府反壟斷調(diào)查，而Google同AT&T、 I.B.M.和微軟一樣，屬于最頂尖的技術(shù)公司，“如果政府忽略了這一點(diǎn)，就非常糟糕”。

微軟是PC時(shí)代的成功者，很大程度上得益于“網(wǎng)絡(luò)效應(yīng)”(network effect)和“正反饋循環(huán)”(positive feedback loop)。這兩個(gè)經(jīng)濟(jì)學(xué)術(shù)語(yǔ)意指某些市場(chǎng)的先驅(qū)者能夠從雪球效應(yīng)得益，從而拉大競(jìng)爭(zhēng)差距。蓋茨也用這兩個(gè)術(shù)語(yǔ)來(lái)描述在網(wǎng)頁(yè)搜索領(lǐng)域挑戰(zhàn)Google的領(lǐng)先地位。使用Google的人越多，Google所掌握的數(shù)據(jù)就越多，而這些數(shù)據(jù)就是進(jìn)一步改進(jìn)搜索結(jié)果的基礎(chǔ)。同時(shí)Google在搜索領(lǐng)域所占的市場(chǎng)份額越大，就有更多的廣告主愿意在Google上打廣告，以便有更大的受眾基礎(chǔ)。這反過(guò)來(lái)又鞏固了Google在廣告市場(chǎng)上的統(tǒng)治地位，增加了Google 的定價(jià)能力。蓋茨認(rèn)為：“這個(gè)行業(yè)中有許多正反饋循環(huán)，而且都很強(qiáng)勁?！?br>
蓋茨稱(chēng)，在去年七月雅虎同微軟達(dá)成搜索交易后，微軟在搜索引擎上投入了巨資。目前，微軟的目標(biāo)是站穩(wěn)腳跟，而不奢望超越Google?！拔覀兊娜硕己芫髂芨?，大家都在研究如何將我們的市場(chǎng)份額提高哪怕一個(gè)百分點(diǎn)。”市場(chǎng)調(diào)查公司comScore的數(shù)據(jù)顯示，去年12月，Google在美國(guó)搜索市場(chǎng)所占的百分比為66%，微軟為11%。