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"Orders of magnitude"? That's a stretch. I doubt Google has as much influence as major broadcasters.

Yeah, the whole "monopoly" word brings stuff to mind that is more a distraction than useful.

>this influence is orders of magnitude greater than any other company.

This is silly, Facebook and Amazon's influence is comparable, if not more. And I'm not even talking about the banks.

follow the money. they are a monopoly if it can generate penalties and further the careers of politicians with regulatory powers.

You're describing regulatory capture, and it doesn't require a monopoly at all, merely deeply-entrenched players with effective lobbyists. Many, many industries engage in regulatory capture without having a single monopolist, e.g. pharma, defense, even say the SF housing market.