Yea, I think there is a clear distinction. Google inhabits an arguably monopolistic or at least monopolistic-competitive (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoli

Yea, I think there is a clear distinction. Google inhabits an arguably monopolistic or at least monopolistic-competitive (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopolistic_competition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopolistic_competition) space. Google also arguably is approximating a public good. Search is free to use, and you actually have to rely on it and use it to compete in the modern marketplace for educational resources. There are many things we all rely on to compete and succeed. We need to drink water, and we need to be able to trust that the water is safe to drink. If a private company is in charge of water, they should be heavily regulated for that very reason. While you won't die without search engines, you obviously need to use them to reasonably compete for economic survival. Google has a majority market share, while Bing and Yahoo trail behind, but they could all easily collaborated with or without government to censor, and it would have extreme consequences for the possibility of free expression, giving these corporations a lot of power. Do we want private corporations to have this much power over free expression? They can also do this without announcing to you that they are currently filtering search results for political reasons (I would be most people don't realize they are already doing this).