[willifred]

While you make a valid point, I also think the parent post might have been also making a different one. It's not so much whether these markets existed prior, but that Google is entering these markets with vastly more resources and (often) with an intent to commoditize the market by giving the product away or undercutting everyone else by a significant margin, so that they can grow their own data-driven advertising business--effectively turning each market they enter into just another 'moat' around their core product.

While I wouldn't deny their right to do so, I also wouldn't deny that it often casts them as a bully.

[chii]

"I also wouldn't deny that it often casts them as a bully."

nothing wrong with throwing their weight around, provided the peopel that matter (who, in my eyes, are the consumers) are treated right. I don't care if a few businesses suffer because of commoditization of their product.

[chugger]

"nothing wrong with throwing their weight around"

there's a term in business for that. I believe the word is "anti-competitive".

[John212]

I agree that their search engine and ad platform could be classified as monopoly. However I disagree that their actions have been anti-competitive in any manner.

They have a huge chunk of the search market but you can still use very good search engines like bing, yahoo, ask, aol or the awesome duckduckgo.

Google is continually tweaking and improving the design, speed, results and features of their search engine in an effort to stay ahead of the competition.

The reasons that people don't use the other engines are not because of google being "anti-competitive" but rather due to them offering a superior service.