The reason that Google, the search engine, is not a monopoly, is that absolutely
anyone can use any alternative search engine, without hindrance or financial
penalty. There is no lock-in, beyond possibly setting a bookmark in your
browser. And, if you use the broken OS from the Convicted Monopolist, it
frequently attempts to drive you towards their pathetic excuse for a search
engine, even when you have told it to default to Google. The fact is that of
the 66%, most are using Google through choice, a few because it may have been
the default, or someone set up their PC to default to Google and they are too
lazy to change. None of that suggests that there is any deliberate vendor
lock-in, or any of the other actions which we have seen from illegal monopolies.
Having a monoply because the competition are pathetic, or people have chosen, is
not illegal. But 66% is not a monopoly anyway. The above are merely practical
observations. I daresay that there are other, legal, reasons why Google does not
constitute an illegal monopoly, but IANAL so I will leave those to someone else
to explain. [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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