[onlyrealcuzzo]

As a consumer, you want everything to be a commodity (i.e. and abundance of choice). This means you'll have more options at every price point.

[dogleash]

>As a consumer, you want everything to be a commodity

True. But I'm also guessing that in 5 years I'll be more frustrated at the level of control they're exercising with thing they're currently building next to it. More so than I am with the market they're commoditising today.

[redanddead]

That never actually happens though, what ends up happening is that people realize it's better to be a literal cartel and MONOPOLY!

And you get the worst of all deals, see Shrinkflation

My point is we shouldn't trust businesses to be moral, and I don't. I'm just angry at the NYSE

[bee_rider]

I would expect a commodity to be produced with pretty low margins (since the competition is pretty fierce), but not for free. If Google is giving away the information for free, is that really a commodity? I mean either they are giving it away for some strategic reason, they are taking their cut in some more byzantine way, or they have decided to act as a charity for at-home traders for some reason.

[Dracophoenix]

Information itself is a commodity. An encyclopedia doesn't have value have because it costs money but the vice versa. Wikipedia is free, yet it has done more for the world in 20 years than the Brittanica has in 250.

I'm not suggesting Google gives away information as a purely altruistic endeavor. However, Google's ulterior motives, should they have any, are irrelevant to the value of the information itself so long as it hasn't been edited or tampered with.