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Comment by RickJWagner | Hacker News Reader

This is interesting to me because Google has the power to greatly influence public opinion.

For me, it's not the business monopoly, it's the influence monopoly. And that's very much worth regulating.

I don't think they have any more influence than media conglomerates like Comcast, who owns NBC, and who effectively turned the attention from net neutrality to hatred of Facebook, Amazon, and Google. It is rather ridiculous to argue that Google, who provides free services, is any more of a monopoly than broadband ISPs.

If you look at adtech there’s really only Google and Facebook so it’d call this very close to a monopoly. This is also not a free service so you are only comparing a small subset of Google services which are mostly built to fuel the ad part (Search and YouTube being the biggest one probably)

> If you look at adtech there’s really only Google and Facebook so it’d call this very close to a monopoly.

Please look up the definition of monopoly before throwing the word. Earlier part of your own sentence refutes the claim that google has a monopoly in ad. Further numbers: https://adage.com/article/digital/duopoly-loses-share-ad-spe...

I‘m well aware of the textbook definition of a monopoly. Thanks for your concern.

I said „close to a monopoly“ to refer to the big market share of either of them, which is clearly the case as also written in your linked article.

Aren't they in different leagues though?

Google has global impact, whereas Comcast (etc) are mostly US?

I think you are greatly overestimating their power. It looks to me like they're walking on eggshells precisely because they can't really exercise the power you think they have without immense backlash.

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