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> some issues of monopoly. What monopoly? Google doesnt remotely have a monopoly on scientific visualisation, and a possible monopoly on search doesnt really o

> some issues of monopoly. What monopoly? Google doesnt remotely have a monopoly on scientific visualisation, and a possible monopoly on search doesnt really overlap with that. The problem small companies have with Google is Google's _size_, so many of their side projects are bigger than somebody else's entire business. This absolutely doesnt have anything to do with their headstart in search. Whatever project somebody else successfully starts, Google can simply outspend them and reach the goal first, but this isnt specific to Google, you have this problem with any other big solvent company. WA would have the same problem if a producer of toilet tissue with more cash reserves than WA suddenly decided to compete with WA.

wcarss 15y ago
If you were to take a poll of earthlings asking them whether they've heard of Google and whether they've heard of Wolfram Alpha, Google would resoundingly win. People would also, by and large, be familiar with their search if anything. If you then asked those people where they would search for an answer to a mathematical problem, or if they wanted to find the meaning of some math equation, it's not hard to believe that they'd google it. Even if they ended up on Wikipedia, they would probably use Google to get there. Before Google launched this feature, people would use the search to (hopefully) end up at Wolfram Alpha. Now, they are likelier (than before) to have their needs met by Google itself. A monopoly on search is a monopoly on access to knowledge. If Google goes into competition with another provider of access to knowledge, they have a tangible head start. That's where I'm coming from -- I concur that search doesn't overlap with everything, but I think it overlaps at least a bit with this.