My agency just dumped Westlaw for cost reasons and now we are exclusively Lexis. Lexis is inferior in many ways. The subject indexes are not nearly as compreh

My agency just dumped Westlaw for cost reasons and now we are exclusively Lexis. Lexis is inferior in many ways. The subject indexes are not nearly as comprehensive or usable (makes sense, since West has a huge head start with this with its Key Number System.) The case summaries are too wordy. Westlaw and Lexis both get big bucks to invest in their databases but then they are not at parity. So I doubt that some free (beer or speech) competitor is going to come along without those same resources and mount a serious challenge in the Lexis or Westlaw strongholds. However, there is a reason Westlaw and Lexis are both going to Google-like interfaces with their next generation products (Westlaw Next and Lexis Advance). Attorneys are just going into Google now. Certainly if I'm looking for a news article I'm going to Google first, where years ago one might have done LexisNexis first. Even having to type my Lexis password is too big an impediment when I can get stuff on Google. Also, when I don't need the firepower of Lexis I often go elsewhere. A lot of my work is just the CFR or US Code and the government has those for free, though the search capability is not as good. So overall I doubt anti-competitive behavior explains much what dominance Westlaw and Lexis still do have (and I do think it's shrinking.) They have invested lots of money and these are professional tools that need lots of investment. The free (beer or speech) competitors aren't going to compete on the elements that need lots of investment, but they will nibble away at the things that Westlaw and Lexis were overkill for.