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Comment by dimator | Hacker News Reader

There's some truth to this. For many years, Google allows users the ability to wholesale export all of their data (perhaps as a defense for this moment in time).

If the consumer market wanted an alternative, wouldn't there be competing companies by now that would ingest all that data and give you matching mail, docs, video, etc, services?

On the advertising front, Google is no longer the only game in town, so by definition not a monopoly.

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> On the advertising front, Google is no longer the only game in town, so by definition not a monopoly.

Who are their competitors (I've not heard of one that isn't directly tied to a platform (a'la facebook))? How is the market segmented between Google and their competitors? If google had, as an example, 80% of the market share, it could still legitimately be considered to be a monopoly, even if it had 1000 competitors fighting for the last 20%.

For one thing, Internet advertising is still not a majority of all ad spending. Google is estimated to control about 1/3rd of the online market, Facebook about 1/4.

This reminds me of a Peter Thiel saying. Something like, when you're not a monopoly you lie to pretend to be one - "We're the only British breakfast restaurant in town" to attract investors. When you are a monopoly you lie to pretend not to be one by expanding your market - "We're a technology company".

Internet advertising may not be a majority of all ad spending, but Google is an internet ad company, not a general ad company. It would be like arguing the old phone company wasn't a monopoly because plenty of communication was still by mail or in person.

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