From The Boston Globe:

“By rolling out a spate of free search products….the company is doing more than building its consumer base. It’s also building an alternative environment for software, advertising, and Internet content that is challenging the business models and eroding the revenue of everyone from publishers to software makers to Internet service providers.”

And, to a large extent, this is an environment they control. They control a lot of what internet users can see, what they can’t see, and they control a powerful advertising system that is effectively driving the cost of content to zero. What’s next? Payment systems?

As Nick Carr points out:

“By democratizing the production and distribution of media, the internet ensures that an overabundance of supply and the resulting competition will drive the price of most content down to its marginal production cost, which is zero”

Are Google the next Microsoft? Do they have even greater potential to monopolize almost everything online?