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Bell Labs was not a monopoly: it did not prevent operation of other research labs. E.g. the highly successful Xeroc PARC co-existed with them for a decade or two.

Bell the telecom company was a monopoly that financed Bell Labs. Bell Labs did not go down in flames when Bell was partitioned in 1982, and continued providing the world with great achievements.

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Totally true; I glossed over the distinction between Bell and Bell Labs -- I suppose this might be analogous (with the full understanding that the analogy is incomplete) to separating Google[x] and Google. However, is it not the case that Bell Labs was able to undertake such ambitious research projects because it was backed by a monopoly?

Also, while Xerox PARC was also a legendary research institution in its day, I don't put it at the scale of Bell Labs, which touched a much broader array of fields. To quantify this distinction, compare the research budgets in 2018 dollars:

- Xerox PARC: ~$450 million (http://articles.latimes.com/2001/dec/12/business/fi-parc12)

- Bell Labs: $6 billion (https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2015/08/comparing-research-bud...)

These sources might be imperfect.

Gee, that sounds familiar.

I guess it's totally different because google only uses their duopoly position in ads to finance everything else.

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