> That said, it intuitively feels like they do at least to the farmer from the tone of the article (and similar stories), and to me as well. Listen (but not bl

> That said, it intuitively feels like they do at least to the farmer from the tone of the article (and similar stories), and to me as well. Listen (but not blindly) to your intuition, because its sense of fairness is keenly honed to allow society to function. Consider the case where Apple doesn't list companies FRAND (and perhaps for a small fee not much larger than their expenses in maintaining a listing) - because of the mass reliance on Apple (or Google) maps, it turns them into either an extortion racket as they extract the highest price they can for good listings, or a blind force of nature, randomly sending small businesses into ruin. The only way to avoid this is mass organization by people to demand fair treatment. We have a mechanism for such organization: laws. They were used against railway trusts, they're used to prevent power and water companies from discriminating, and they could be used here. Non-physical infrastructure such as maps and yellow pages has the same dangers of monopoly power as railways and power lines.