Monopoly Cops May Find Google Too Popular to Bust

Google Has Good Product, But It's Also a Monopoly

By Harry Kimball, Newser Staff

Posted May 7, 2009 1:48 PM CDT

(Newser) – The government is finally getting wise to the fact that Google holds a monopoly on Internet advertising, and has launched two antitrust investigations, Therese Poletti writes for MarketWatch. Google is “becoming almost a privatized version of the dreaded Big Brother from George Orwell's 1984,” Poletti writes, worse even than the threat Microsoft posed in the 1990s. But satisfied users might not care.

“They have gone from being David to being Goliath,” said one author. “Google has become the dominant search engine,” Poletti writes, contrasting with Microsoft’s bundling-boosted status, “because it is usually quite good.” Its practice of snapping up rights to books is troubling, and Google “has surely been put on notice,” but the company could be unstoppable. And it’s unclear if “users even want that to happen.”

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Google headquarters in Mountain View, Calif. (AP Photo)

Google CEO Eric Schmidt. (AP Photo)

Google logos are shown inside Google headquarters in Mountain View, Calif. (AP Photo)

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Another difference between Microsoft's battles with regulators and Google's situation is that Google develops technology that most people love and are loathe to give up. - Therese Poletti

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Monopoly Cops May Find Google Too Popular to Bust