[Spivak]

But I don't think this tracks unless you treat search as something special. If I own a billboard then I have a monopoly on that billboard. Presumably I built/bought that billboard because I knew that the ad space would be valuable and that companies would need to pay me for it.

Google owns extremely valuable ad space but that to me doesn't make a monopoly just because Bing or Facebook's ad space isn't as good for certain companies.

[hannasanarion]

And if only one company owned all the billboards in the world, that would be a monopoly too.

Monopolies are traditionally assessed in terms of product categories, not entire industries. Nobody ever said "standard oil isn't a monopoly, because you can also buy coal fuel"

[turtleturtle]

And practically any company can build as many billboards as they want. Online ads aren't restricted by physical space. Google just happens to own most web traffic because they're really good at search.

[vharuck]

Maybe a better analogy is Google owns the biggest road system (search) and all land beside it for billboards (ads). Very few people use other road systems.

Now, one might say "But users can choose other search engines." But users are the resource, not the customers. Right now, Google controls most of these resources. And the very nature of search means they're not sharing access with competitors.

[cortesoft]

> And if only one company owned all the billboards in the world, that would be a monopoly too.

You mean clearchannel? (Now iHeartRadio)

[ummonk]

It makes sense to treat search as something special; when people are looking for a service, they search for it. They won't see ads for that service on, e.g. social media because social media won't know they want that service.