I can get behind your first suggestion. Social influence can be huge, and it doesn't require a legal club to beat a company down with.
Do you think it's necessarily a bad thing when smaller companies get bought by Google? What you don't mention in the case that all startups refuse a buyout is that the #1 search product improves at a much slower rate. Their technology may be interesting and useful, but in itself not enough to draw consumers, while if it were integrated into a larger product, it could bring that new technology to many more people much more quickly. Do we gain more by using technologies as individual products than we do by using them as parts of a larger, integrated whole? Probably sometimes we do. But always?
I can't say I'm familiar with all the things you mention in your last point. But if I knew about all of them, understood their purpose and what value they served, do you think I would use them all? I feel like I would probably just type a Google search, which could potentially search all of those for me. I know social, I know Q&A - it doesn't really seem to me that with just those services, I would have a set of tools as powerful as Google itself. I use them on occasion, but for specific things. Search engines are general purpose question answerers - it seems like this is why they're more popular. I think if all of those services were out first, and then Google came along, it'd still be the most powerful and grow to be huger, because in general, it's more useful.
Do you think it's necessarily a bad thing when smaller companies get bought by Google? What you don't mention in the case that all startups refuse a buyout is that the #1 search product improves at a much slower rate. Their technology may be interesting and useful, but in itself not enough to draw consumers, while if it were integrated into a larger product, it could bring that new technology to many more people much more quickly. Do we gain more by using technologies as individual products than we do by using them as parts of a larger, integrated whole? Probably sometimes we do. But always?
I can't say I'm familiar with all the things you mention in your last point. But if I knew about all of them, understood their purpose and what value they served, do you think I would use them all? I feel like I would probably just type a Google search, which could potentially search all of those for me. I know social, I know Q&A - it doesn't really seem to me that with just those services, I would have a set of tools as powerful as Google itself. I use them on occasion, but for specific things. Search engines are general purpose question answerers - it seems like this is why they're more popular. I think if all of those services were out first, and then Google came along, it'd still be the most powerful and grow to be huger, because in general, it's more useful.