I think your reference to minimum wage is a little tenuous at best. The thing about technology is that it keeps progressing and eliminates barriers to entry.

I think your reference to minimum wage is a little tenuous at best. The thing about technology is that it keeps progressing and eliminates barriers to entry. Yes, Google has a lot of machines, but now, without a lot of capital you can run a competing service without even having to own hardware. Yes, it's hard to write good spam filters, but Open Source Software allows you to get access to code that others have written which may be of similar quality, or at least give you a leg up on writing your own. So yes, Google gets a temporary lock on mindset and technology, but as technology progresses there open up new opportunities to unseat the incumbents. If you'd asked anyone 10 or 20 years ago whether Microsoft could be unseated, they would have said you were crazy. The same goes for Google. With technology, nothing is permanent. Either you innovate, or you get left behind.