i don't see anywhere in the linked article that talks about breaking up google, so it's hard to know what you're responding to. the article does make a central

i don't see anywhere in the linked article that talks about breaking up google, so it's hard to know what you're responding to. the article does make a central claim that google has an information monopoly, and that the search market needs competition (and oh, look at that, they made a new search engine!). search isn't a naturally monopolistic market, because although there are some initial high fixed costs, much of those costs can be roughly scaled with size. there aren't really any other significant barriers to entry. marginally but noticeably better search results (e.g., pagerank) did provide an early advantage for google, which is how it established its monopoly over time in the first place (combined with the ad auction model from overture, which gave it economic & political might), but that advantage has eroded with its lack of focus on search. google also has a giant suite of data gathering products but it's not clear that those provide a true competitive advantage in search (again, search results aren't much better than the competition). the other interesting characteristic of search is that its competition isn't necessarily zero-sum. a user might do the same search on multiple search engines, providing each competitor with a full marginal revenue opportunity, rather than only one competitor winning the business (as in classic competition). because of all this, i'm neutral on the breakup argument but am bullish on the "increasing competition" argument for search.