[riku_iki]

> Google search has 92% market share.

its generic search, when you go to vertical searches, say Amazon may beat google for shopping searches. Reddit can build good search one day, and many people including me will switch to searching inside reddit, instead of adding "reddit" to google search query.

You are right, google is currently generic search monopoly, but we were talking about ads, and there are plenty of other ads verticals.

[yakak]

I think the discussion was any monopoly that serves as a cash cow to enable poor management.

For comparison, AT&T had a monopoly only on long distance, so people could choose drastically different behavior if they wanted to defund AT&T. I.e. you didn't need to move out of the region where most of your relations lived but it was a better deal to pay AT&T's tax (and regional monopolies charged more than true long distance on many regional calls). Potentially making a lot more money and having an entirely different life out weighed higher than market phone rates that made AT&T a successful cash cow.

[riku_iki]

Ok, but rant above was about decision makers, and looks like decision makers did just fine in building monopoly, 10 years ago google had 60% of search share, with Y and B another 15% each.

Also, it is not clear how much money google makes from search specifically, and how much from other verticals where there is stronger competition.