
Everyone Loves Google, Until It’s Too Big - peter123
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/22/business/22digi.html
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mcarlin
I think a much bigger problem is Wikipedia. It's a much quieter but much
stronger monopoly, and the people who run it are known to be prone to cliques,
drama and manipulation. Google is professional, and for the time being, not
dangerous. Wikipedia is still somewhat unprofessional, and is rapidly becoming
the world's source for encyclopedic knowledge.

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herval
everybody I know always says wikipedia is a non-trustworthy source of
encyclopedic information (unless verifiable in some other source). And plus
there are several wikipedias out there, it is open source - and it doesn't
even make 1/1000 of the money GOOG does! in what sense is it a monopoly?

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scorpioxy
I don't know how useful it is to worry about this. Isn't this what happened to
Yahoo in the late-90s, early 2k?

The market will always respond to correct abnormalities. As in, when Google
stops innovating, somebody else will.

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vaksel
we need viable alternatives, simply for the fact that without competition
Google would have no reason to innovate.

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patio11
I think it is a bit more pressing than that. They haven't stopped innovating,
but their pricing for AdWords is _maddeningly_ non-transparent (its an
auction, except when Google decides its not an auction) and only constrained
by the availability of other viable contextual ad platforms. Of which there
are, essentially, none.

Anyone who disagrees with this assessment of Microsoft and Yahoo's offerings
should be sentenced to actually using the things. The interfaces are garbage,
the traffic is low-quality, and most damning of all there just isn't enough of
it to make dealing with the other headaches a viable use of your time. Google
can routinely find $600 worth of inventory for me in a month, Microsoft
struggles to find $30 -- and I'm in about the most non-technical niche you
could imagine using a search engine.

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dotcoma
agree. but I'm not sure that merging Yahoo! Search and Live Search would be
much of an improvement...

