An important difference that a lot of people seem to ignore: Ma Bell's users were Ma Bell's customers. Google's users are not Google's customers - they are Go

An important difference that a lot of people seem to ignore: Ma Bell's users were Ma Bell's customers. Google's users are not Google's customers - they are Google's product. Google's customers are advertisers, and it is there where Google has a monopoly, and talk of "cost of switching" is meaningless in that respect - other advertising venues are meaningless for most advertisers.