Caution: When the halo wears off, they will go for you.
How much market share does a monopoly require? Google accounted for 72% of internet searches in Dec of last year and accounted for 69% of searches for the year.
I think they earned that market share through customer focus and excellent technology. But that isn’t the point to trust busters. They are concerned about consolidated market power’s effect on markets. Or so they say. More often the trust laws are used by politicians to curry campaign cash through fear or alliance. For instance, see Orrin Hatch take Novell money and dig in to Microsoft back in the 90’s.
There can be no doubt that Google controls the search market and its decisions ripple throughout the world to almost every company in the world. It it isn’t a monopoly, it is near that point.
But Google learned Microsoft’s lessons. They play the politics game. They support gay marriage. They know which side is up and work that hard. They also provide lots of cool free services to keep the public happy – Google Docs, Google Earth for instance. They are busy making friends to fight for them.
So I don’t think Congress will go after them. Unless they smell blood. Then they will target them and pick them apart like piranhas.
I like Google. I think they are well run and do what I want in a search engine. I hope they survive the governments wrath when they finally reach the threshold where they are noticed.