I'm with you on that one. I've never understood it when people say that Google has a monopoly as powerful as Microsoft or Facebook. If a Facebook user finds a s

I'm with you on that one. I've never understood it when people say that Google has a monopoly as powerful as Microsoft or Facebook. If a Facebook user finds a social network that's better than Facebook, tough luck. The value of Facebook is that their friends are on it so they can't switch to another social network. If a Windows user discovers an operating system that's better than Windows, tough luck if you rely on any applications that only run on Windows. If a Google user discovers a better search engine then switching is the easiest thing in the world. The main barriers to entry that exist around Google search are that search is really hard to do, not that Google have some kind of lock in that makes it hard to change search engines. I really like joe_the_user's Mongol Hoard analogy. Google aren't scorching the earth or building a moat or otherwise erecting barriers to entry around search. With Android, for example, they are attempting to ensure that no fortifications can be built on the surrounding land. That's a very different thing.