Sept. 4, Google is incorporated
Over the past 20+ years, the phrase “Google it” has become synonymous with “look it up.” The internet’s favorite search engine is used to search the web 13 billion times a month, and today Google’s parent company, Alphabet, has expanded into countless other ventures from AI and robots to smartphones and computers.
But, does Google have so big a share of the online search market that it could be considered a monopoly? In the most lax sense of the term, yes. In 2015, Google had 75 percent of the market for searches. But upon closer inspection, Google is not using coercive or anti-competitive practices to support this “monopoly” on internet searches, but rather simply offering a superior product to its competitors. As it is an internet service, there are low barriers of entry for anyone who wishes to create a competing search engine, and consumers have no real transaction costs if they choose to switch to a different search engine.
Additionally, Alphabet does not dominate the market in the other sectors it competes in, complicating the monopoly argument further .
- Do you think Google is a monopoly in the truest sense of the term? Why or why not?
- If believe it is not, what would make it so?
- Should the government intervene to break up Google’s dominance of the internet search market? Does it qualify for antitrust laws?
31 July, 2018, Google image. [Digital image]. Retrieved from <investopedia.com>.