> 1. They may benefit more from better services. 2. As far as I know Google operates a lot of services which are not profitable by themselfs.
So what? Billion dollar companies subsidizing tech for the masses (even selfishly) is not a bad thing. That's one of the best thing about capitalism.
> It's a bit like when (in the old days) the major phone company
No, it's not like that, phone companies were granted monopolies by governments enforced by the law and force of the state. Google is not enforced by the use of government force or law, it's just pleasant to use and so people use it willingly, huge difference.
> this worked mostly because they got far too lazy with IE
You're proving my points, monopolies that are used willingly and not enforced by the government are forced to innovate to survive, if they don't people will check alternatives.
> Microsoft was dominant on the client for over a decade and still is in a lot of areas. It took a long time and a shift to new device categories to partly break that monopoly. And finally what happened is only a shift to a new dominant player called Google.
So a company had a great technology and marketshare that lasted ~15 years only, how is that something to worry about exactly? They had the best tech and grabbed the market until they didn't have the best tech. What's wrong exactly here? Google has the best Search right now and most of the market, if their tech starts lagging, they will lose their marketshare. Again, not seeing the issue here.
> Only exceptionally big innovations which are so different to even overwhelm the monopolist have a chance.
Again, that's exactly my point, trying to bring down monopolies by force only discourages/postpones exceptionally big innovations from happening. Also, Google itself was a huge innovation by itself, why is it a bad thing that only another huge innovation could beat them?
Erm, Microsoft lost it’s dominance in part because it too lost an anti-trust case. Are you saying you wish Microsoft had been powerful enough to stifle Google the way Google is now powerful enough to stifle its competitors? What’s another 15 years?
Nope. Microsoft was forced to discontinue its anti-competitive bundling tactics, which they otherwise would have used to throttle competition as they did with Netscape.
For that matter, Apple only exists today because of Microsoft’s investment, which was in part done only to keep their competitor alive so that they could claim not to have a complete monopoly.
Apple and Google’s products certainly were better, but they would have been crushed by anti-competitive practices if Microsoft had not already lost their antitrust case.
So what? Billion dollar companies subsidizing tech for the masses (even selfishly) is not a bad thing. That's one of the best thing about capitalism.
> It's a bit like when (in the old days) the major phone company
No, it's not like that, phone companies were granted monopolies by governments enforced by the law and force of the state. Google is not enforced by the use of government force or law, it's just pleasant to use and so people use it willingly, huge difference.
> this worked mostly because they got far too lazy with IE
You're proving my points, monopolies that are used willingly and not enforced by the government are forced to innovate to survive, if they don't people will check alternatives.
> Microsoft was dominant on the client for over a decade and still is in a lot of areas. It took a long time and a shift to new device categories to partly break that monopoly. And finally what happened is only a shift to a new dominant player called Google.
So a company had a great technology and marketshare that lasted ~15 years only, how is that something to worry about exactly? They had the best tech and grabbed the market until they didn't have the best tech. What's wrong exactly here? Google has the best Search right now and most of the market, if their tech starts lagging, they will lose their marketshare. Again, not seeing the issue here.
> Only exceptionally big innovations which are so different to even overwhelm the monopolist have a chance.
Again, that's exactly my point, trying to bring down monopolies by force only discourages/postpones exceptionally big innovations from happening. Also, Google itself was a huge innovation by itself, why is it a bad thing that only another huge innovation could beat them?