I think the main problem here is not if Google is a monopoly at this very moment. But when you consider the speed with which they acquire new data from virtually every area where a lot of information exists, you have to ask yourself, how dangerous can it be, if they at some point in the future decide: "Hey, lets just kick the don't-be-evil nonsense and start making more money."
Of course something like that would have legal consequences, but regardless of that, Google could totally change the web within a day if they wanted to. For all the good they are doing, I think it is absolutely vital to always consider where the whole thing might be headed sometime in the future.
Just some problematic examples:
1) Like last week, something broke at Google, a good part of the web was non-usable because of embedded analytics code and so on. In the future this could just mean, that any downtime of Google would have implications alike to when your ISP is down.
2) Thanks to analytics and their own various services, they must have user-data that is beyond any imagination. Like a whole shopping history nicely matched to your email and health problems. That is just scary.
So, I think the real question is not whether Google is a monopoly, but more like 'How scary could a Google-monopoly be?'
Comments
I think the main problem here is not if Google is a monopoly at this very moment. But when you consider the speed with which they acquire new data from virtually every area where a lot of information exists, you have to ask yourself, how dangerous can it be, if they at some point in the future decide: "Hey, lets just kick the don't-be-evil nonsense and start making more money."
Of course something like that would have legal consequences, but regardless of that, Google could totally change the web within a day if they wanted to. For all the good they are doing, I think it is absolutely vital to always consider where the whole thing might be headed sometime in the future.
Just some problematic examples:
1) Like last week, something broke at Google, a good part of the web was non-usable because of embedded analytics code and so on. In the future this could just mean, that any downtime of Google would have implications alike to when your ISP is down.
2) Thanks to analytics and their own various services, they must have user-data that is beyond any imagination. Like a whole shopping history nicely matched to your email and health problems. That is just scary.
So, I think the real question is not whether Google is a monopoly, but more like 'How scary could a Google-monopoly be?'
What do you think?