News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Ask HN: If Google is a monopoly, should we be doing anyth... by davidw on Tuesday May 19, 2009 @07:58AM (#616602)
The Economist had a story about tech monopolies recently, which made for interesting reading.

http://www.economist.com/displayStory.cfm?story_id=13610959

It's a difficult problem, and there is likely to be a diversity of opinion here, from the libertarian "let them do whatever they want" to some on the other side advocating lots of government involvement.

The problem isn't really search in terms of end users, it's twofold:

* Search in terms of people/businesses being searched for: if Google removes you from their index, you are screwed.

* Online advertising. There are already a number of stories about people getting cut off for no reason at all (at least none that was made public), which is potentially scary if there are no alternatives and you depend on them.

There are no comments on this comment yet.