There is another advantage/disadvantage (depending on your perspective) to Google vs. AT&T that I haven't seen discussed. One of the classical arguments in fav

There is another advantage/disadvantage (depending on your perspective) to Google vs. AT&T that I haven't seen discussed. One of the classical arguments in favor of monopolies is not just efficiency but that they concentrate capital for large-scale investment. In the case of AT&T this occurred with Bell Labs, and it is also happening with Google. Whether an alternative system could be more innovative is impossible to determine. I am of the opinion that, even in Silicon Valley, the big firms (Bell Labs, Xerox, Google) make the biggest investments and innovations (semiconductors, operating systems, search engines), while smaller startups adapt these technologies to business uses.