So substitute Amazon, Facebook, or any of the companies that people have many complaints with, yet continue to funnel their business to because competitors can't match the network effects.
I'm not sure how citing a single example counters my point, but I'll bite: Searchers aren't the customers of Google, and we have no shortage of stories on HN about Google abusing or potentially abusing their monopoly.
To return to my point: healthy market competition involves providing value for the consumer. In a healthy market there are low profit margins because high profit margins indicate a change for competition to enter and undercut. Companies competing and failing or falling to competition are not (necessarily) a sign of problem, as an above poster seemed to be saying.
However, companies seeking to find ways to prevent competition or deny it via network effects ARE a sign of an unhealthy market. And companies (as cited by the article and most of the tech-buzz-startup scene) are all about trying to grab that advantage and hold it. Logically the consumer is the one that ultimately suffers, per the very premise of healthy market competition.
I can see the day coming when the "sign in" button on "google.com" is a popup, instead of a little box in the upper right. Maybe you can still bypass it, but a dark pattern suggests strongly that you must log in to search.