Krugman proceeds assuming that were true, but it's not. There are plenty of free alternatives to Google Reader. All this proves that old saying; never pick a fight with someone who buys ink by the barrel.
Unfortunately, he isn't either. He isn't an expert in internet protocols because he doesn't have a sufficient understanding of how the internet works. He isn't an expert in economics because there's no such thing as an expert in economics.
I mean this seriously: [macro]economics isn't an empirical science; no experimentation, no experience, therefore no expertise. Mastering untestable theoretical doctrine doesn't count as substantive expertise.
That said it also suffers from a similar pathology where academic investigation is systematically distorted, occasionally suppressed outright and researchers in the field are sometimes attacked ( literally ) for the views that are ascribed to them.
How?
Google Apps could be critical for a lot of businesses, but they're charging for that now, and presumably making money.
Now, Internet ISPs, on the other hand, might fall under the category of "crucial public infrastructure" and could probably use some government oversight.
In the 1860s, we connected Americans to a transcontinental railroad that brought cattle from Cheyenne to the stockyards of Chicago. In the 1930s, we connected Americans to an electric grid that improved agriculture and brought industry to the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee and the Great Plains of Nebraska. In the 1950s, we connected Americans to an interstate highway system that fueled jobs on the line in Detroit and in the warehouse in L.A.
Infrastructure networks unite us as a country, bringing together parents and children, buyers and sellers, and citizens and government in ways once unimaginable. Ubiquitous access to infrastructure networks has continually driven American innovation, progress, prosperity and global leadership.
In communications, the government stimulated the construction of radio and television facilities across the country by offering huge tracts of the public’s airwaves free of charge. It did the same with telephony through a Universal Service Fund, fulfilling the vision of the Communications Act of 1934 'to make available, so far as possible, to all the people of the United States, a rapid, efficient, Nation-wide, and world-wide wire and radio communication service with adequate facilities at reasonable charges.' ... Today, high-speed Internet is transforming the landscape of America more rapidly and more pervasively than earlier infrastructure networks. Like railroads and highways, broadband accelerates the velocity of commerce, reducing the costs of distance. Like electricity, it creates a platform for America’s creativity to lead in developing better ways to solve old problems. Like telephony and broadcasting, it expands our ability to communicate, inform and entertain.
Broadband is the great infrastructure challenge of the early 21st century.