Re:European Commission fines Google €2.42B for abusing domin...
by frgtpsswrdlame on Tuesday June 27, 2017 @10:17AM
(#14645572)
Sure, barriers are a gray area. In society we draw a sort of arbitrary line for when they're high enough to represent a natural monopoly. We've decided that electric and water companies for example represent high enough fixed costs to warrant being a utility. So the question then becomes how much do you think it would cost to build a search engine as good as Google? I'd say that number is probably ginormous, hence why it should be treated as a utility.
There's a high cost to building a store and the more stores you build, the more customers you serve, the more stores you can afford to build.
There's a high cost to making a movie and the more movies you make, the more people pay to see your movies, the more movies you can afford to make.