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Google has a natural monopoly. I am a big supporter of penalties for monopoly abuse but not all monopolies are bad. They do all need thorough oversight and regu
by spacemanmatt 9y ago
Google has a natural monopoly. I am a big supporter of penalties for monopoly abuse but not all monopolies are bad. They do all need thorough oversight and regulation. But having a monopoly is not strictly bad. The illegal actions done to maintain them are strictly bad. They should be allowed to come and go as the markets demand.
- 0xbear 9y agoMonopolies that are allowed to exist (e.g. last mile telecom, utilities) are usually very tightly regulated. Probably to the extent that Google would prefer to be broken up instead.
- tonyedgecombe 9y agoI'm not sure you could break Google up in a meaningful way without destroying it. Considering the majority of their revenue is search how could you divide up search?
- 0xbear 9y agoNot destroying it would not actually be the goal. Breaking it up could mean, for instance, splitting one search engine into two.
- gaius 9y agoA "natural monopoly" is something like the water or sewage or electricity provider where is isn't sensible to physically run more than one set of pipes into everyone's house. That dynamic doesn't apply at all to search engines.