> People are not forced to use Google Search of Gmail.

I think the GP misspoke. It's more accurate to say that people are forced to use Google products. Even if you use DDG and Fastmail there's no escaping reCaptcha, AMP, and Google Analytics - unless you want to limit yourself to only a few websites.

I don’t think so. I think GP used the term monopoly when oligopoly would have been more appropriate. I use the term oligopoly but it’s quite common to say monopoly because it’s a very similar thing. Also Duck Duck Go is not comparable to Google Search or Bing.

But the AMP infection has spread to those as well. Well, DDG at least. I had to stop using the "news" tab on DDG because of the high percentage of results there that are AMP links.

Yes, they are “free to chose alternatives”. But Google is a monopoly, so...

And through the monopoly users are forced to use AMP.

Do you know what the word monopoly means? It comes from mono- meaning one. So if there are alternatives, there isn’t one option, therefore, it isn’t a monopoly

Google doesn't have to be literally the only search provider to have a monopoly. It just has to have virtually all the market share (it does) and high barriers to entry (it does). Microsoft had a monopoly on operating systems in the nineties, despite the existence of other OS's.

Don't have to be pedantic about it. Google is big enough and controls enough marketshare that it can be considered a monopoly. Especially when it rolls out something like 'AMP' that eventually causes others to follow suit to support it.

Hey sorry for offtopic, but I saw your post about TwitchVC - is it dead now? Join link from blogpost doesn't work

Calling Google search a monopoly is trivially wrong given totally viable and easily usable alternatives.

Ads, however...

You cannot make an appointment on the california DMV website without using Google products.