Before Latin American countries privatized their telecom companies, it would often take weeks or even months to get a new phone line. Despite being owned by the government and not operated to generate a profit, a monopoly service resulted in extremely poor service.

I think it's a good comparison to Google. The big G can say "We're not being evil!" all it wants. But the fact is that it has a near monopoly on search engine advertising which allows it to treat its advertisers awfully. Imagine a radio station randomly pulling ads without a proper explanation. What would happen? The radio station next door would get the ad dollars.

Try calling Google Adwords phone support (trust me it exists, my friend works there.) You won't find the number listed on their site. I googled and found it on some obscure forum. I was answered with a teleprompt, asking me for my adwords customer number. I'm not a high roller (couple hundred bucks a month) so after the system identifed me it dropped my call. I had to use their crappy email system, where I was answered by a cut-and-paste response that didn't answer my question.

I've had no trouble reaching Yahoo and MSN's search engine marketing groups by phone.