[joeshmoe23]

There is no monopoly when your stuff is free, has virtually zero replacement cost and no lock-in.

The "google is a monopoly" trope was introduced and cultivated by Steve Ballmer's Microsoft and it's being constantly adopted and revised by anyone with an axe to grind.

[quickthrower2]

Google has a monopoly on search advertising which is not free.

[joeshmoe23]

"search advertising" is a curiously narrow distinction, the market is "advertising" and they own but a sliver of it.

[quickthrower2]

I’d be interested in what you class as a monopoly? You can always expand or shrink a market definition to suit whatever agenda.

Using DeBeers as an example (from the Wikipedia article on monopoly), they could be argued to not have a monopoly, because diamonds are a sliver of the gifting market.

[joeshmoe23]

Isn't that what you're doing?

Search ads isn't the only way to reach people and it's not an impediment for new entrants as shown by Amazon's ad business.

As for the general matter, google has the right to publish and design their website however they see fit, it's a no brainer, the only reason this question keeps popping up is that google has very powerful enemies in basically all news and publishing companies (they blame it for their dwindling ad revenue), not to mention the oracles and yelps of the world and all of them are piggybacking on the infrastructure laid down by microsoft at the time.

[quickthrower2]

Ok maybe monopoly isn’t the word, but what’s the word that describes how it is virtually impossible for anyone else to write a seriously competing search engine, given the resources, trade secrets and patents Google has.

Also can you give me an example of a true monopoly as per your definition. Even the US government doesn’t have a tax monopoly because there are other countries you can live in.

[mav3rick]

You are literally disincentivizing anyone making any company. Every company will have it's secret sauce. You're blaming Google for being "so good " that "it's no fair".

[joeshmoe23]

If someone were to invent a new method for information retrieval superior to a search engine they could thrive.

As for proper monopolies it's usually the power/water utilities, although I think that the breakup of at&t back in the day was ill advised because their monopoly sustained bell labs, possibly the greatest innovation hub ever, that being one example of these populist antitrust notions backfiring.