[SilasX]

Right, the issue was to make it credible. It was never difficult for someone to say "screw this, I'll use a different search engine instead" and be using it in minutes. Google would even find it for them!

The last sentence of the quote is false; only a small fraction of that money was spent on "building the search engine". Again, the relevant point is whether you can offer an alternative, which MS (and several others) have done with a fraction of that $12 billion. If it's difficult to offer something better because the top provider is legitimately the best at it, that's not the worrisome monopoly we should worry about.

Imagine the comparable investment to make a different OS that runs MS Word and getting a home user to use it instead of Windows/Word. Or running an alternate rail line from San Jose to San Francisco.

[Jommi]

The problem with this is twofold: 1. How do we define the "best" search engine?

2. How can we know that the only reason Google can keep being the best out of incumbents is because of past network value. e.g. if a competitor had access to the same amount of historical sea h data as Google, could they use it in a better way?