> I don't think search really has a high barrier to entry. Others disagree, including Google Chief Economist Hal Varian, who said (in 2008)[1]: “Scale is pret

> I don't think search really has a high barrier to entry. Others disagree, including Google Chief Economist Hal Varian, who said (in 2008)[1]: “Scale is pretty critical [because] search technology exhibits increasing returns to scale.” Or Jonathan Rosenberg, Senior Vice President of Product Management and Marketing: “So more users more information, more information more users, more advertisers more users, more users more advertisers, it’s a beautiful thing." Or Eric Schmidt: “Scale is key. We just have so much scale in terms of the data we can bring to bear.” “We are a company that operates at scale . . . trust me it is a scale company.” “We think search is about comprehensiveness, freshness, scale and size for what we do. It’s difficult for [Microsoft] to copy that.” It seems obvious to me that internet search has both economies of scale and network effects, both classic barriers to entry. [1] http://fairsearch.org/fact-checking-google-scale-is-a-barrier-to-entry-in-search/ http://fairsearch.org/fact-checking-google-scale-is-a-barrie...