To take another concrete example, PHP is extremely popular. It doesn't mean PHP-the-language is better than less popular alternatives, it means it's extremely easy to throw things together and deploy (mostly due to almost universal support on VPS). Nonetheless, PHP's history is an accumulation of appalling technical decisions and security holes.
- It was the only way to throw together a webapp easily for a long time.
- It is actually pretty efficient for this purpose.
- Much later Python and Node became viable alternatives.
- As soon as they did, people started shifting to them, and today few people would start a new project in PHP.
So according to my (not very informed) understanding, the history of PHP supports my claim that inherent quality (relative tot he alternatives) is more important than network effects.
I've never heard anyone describe a monopoly and say it had inherent quality before. Interesting.
(Note that I'm not saying you're accurate in your assessment as to reasons why PHP became popular, just that your reasoning as to why it has inherent quality is interesting)
isn't by definition a monopoly the highest standard of inherent quality? (unless of course there has been coercion/force/aggression)
i kinda think that google got a 100% monopoly because at the time they were the best search engine (and remained so). and as soon as someone comes along who is better, the monopoly will end (i use ddg but i'll admit it's not as good. i like some of the cool hacks and features so i'm trying to stick with it). am i wrong?
It depends how difficult it is to displace this monopoly. Monopolies don't necessarily sustain themselves by being superior to the alternatives. Regulatory capture, vendor lock in or billions of lines of existing code are quite effective for this purpose.
From Swatow's post - "i kinda think that google got a 100% monopoly because at the time they were the BEST search engine"
Emphasis on -best-. Compared to all the others. I.e., altavista, yahoo, ask.com, msn, lycos, infoseek, etc". Google came into the party late, and -displaced- the existing players, by offering a superior product.
Swatow stated that when PHP came on the scene it was the "only way to throw together a website easily", that it's now being displaced by other tech, but because for a time it was the only way to do it easily, it somehow had inherent quality. That would be like saying that because Archie was the first search engine, it had inherent quality.
