Great Experience Design Leads To Anti-Competitive Practices: In the wake of the EU’s decision to issue Google a $5 billion fine, Paul Ford and Rich Ziadetalk about how great experience design obliterates competition while antitrust laws cramp designers’ style. In between conversations about the ethics of being able to choose, we learn that Rich would die without being able to choose between Vietnamese and Italian coffee, and whispers that Postlight could be shipping an app to finally unite people who walk their cats on leashes. 

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Paul — 2:40: “It’s useful, right? Actually what I do is I use it with the kids a lot, when it’s like, who’s got the first shower? It’s like, ‘hey Google, flip a coin.’”

Paul — 3:05: “[Google] knows everything. It’s very smart and it’s a giant company that doesn’t just provide search interfaces anymore, even though that’s its base. It’s worth noting the way it makes money is advertising products on top of those search experiences.”

Paul — 4:15: “First of all, nobody wants DuckDuckGo down there. The people who do have already opted into hacking their palm tree out. It’s Google. Nobody wants ‘Bing Phone.’”

Paul — 6:35: “Europe… home of Europeans who don’t always see giant privacy-busting companies that track you everywhere you go as a good thing. It’s a damn shame. I mean, what is the point of America if not to make those companies happen?”

Paul — 7:20: “The European Commission has fined Google $5 billion — which, actually is a meaningful amount of money, finally — for having all that convenience! What they see is that Google has pushed manufacturers to use Android on the phones that they create. It’s locked them into an Android ecosystem that Google controls.”

Paul — 8:25: “Now you’re in a position that’s not dissimilar from back in ye olden days when Microsoft got in big trouble for bundling Internet Explorer and really integrating it with the Windows operating system in such a way that it became less interesting and more of a challenge for people to download other web browsers.”

Paul — 9:15: “Many of our listeners are probably on iPhones, and they’re actually very much in the global minority.”

Rich — 10:30: “This isn’t working for me. What’s anti-competitive? It’s a phone. I’m going to be anti-antitrust. That’s a double negative, sort of. If you want to compete, design a phone [and] sell a phone.”

Paul — 11:10: “To catch up to Google feels like an impossible task.”

Rich — 12:10: “A lot of the motivation around antitrust is control and your ability to control the value of things.”

Rich — 13:20: “This is ultimately about the consumer. If competition does not thrive and people are not given the opportunity to innovate for the benefit of a consumer, then too much power gets concentrated in one place.”

Paul — 19:30: “Look, this was not the way it was supposed to go. The way it was supposed to go is that AOL existed, and then there was MSN, the Microsoft Network, and there’d be like four or five of those, and they would duke it out to provide cool services and interesting media content to people through their modems.”

Rich — 21:13: “The impact of anti-competitor practices and how they have to be modified actually affects the user experience.”

Paul — 24:25: “It will be a switch that handset makers will have to implement, and Google will have to make it part of the software, and it will allow for people to choose their browser and choose their default search experience and that will be embedded into Android. You won’t get the ability to search with your voice if you don’t opt into Google.”

Rich — 25:30: “Great experience design leads to anti-competitive practices.”

LINKS

• Experience Design
• DuckDuckGo
• European Union vs. Google
• What is ‘Antitrust’?
• Sherman Antitrust Act

Track Changes is the weekly technology and culture podcast from Postlight, hosted by Paul Ford and Rich Ziade. Production, show notes and transcripts by EDITAUDIO. Podcast logo and design by Will Denton of Postlight.

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