Monday, October 25, 2010

Net Neutrality, Google's "Monopoly," Internet 2



The New Yorker: Tim Wu On Communication, Chaos, And Control

Some say Google at some point will have become a monopoly. It will have become too big. It would at some point stand in the way of innovation. Some say Google's teaming up with Verizon to take a stand against net neutrality was Google's first evil act.

China Is The Reason Google Did Verizon

It is possible Google's ad platform becomes so dominant that there is no other major way to make money online. Somehow I don't believe that will be true. Already Facebook is coming strong with a quite different ad platform.

And there are a whole bunch of startups that are working in the ad space. The ads online currently are delivering only a fraction of what they should. Maybe some of them will get bought by Google, Apple and Facebook.
Net Neutrality And Creative Freedom (Tim Wu at...Image by Fräulein Schiller via Flickr
But there is just something about the internet. It is hard for any one company to rule the internet. The internet, by definition, is unruly.

So far Google has been innovating fast and furious. Actually one of the things so impressive about Google has been that now they are big, they seem to be into placing big bets on ever more bigger innovations in entirely new industries. Google has been so strong on clean tech, for example. Clean tech is not exactly search, but Google has realized there is only so much money they might want to put into search. And that a responsible corporation has to look into clean tech.

Google Car, Google Monorail
Offshoring The Wind Harvesting: Google Wind

I think Google will keep innovating, and when it slows down, young companies will come along, and those companies will carry the innovation torch. In short, I somehow don't see Google ending up in monopoly court. That is a statement more on the nature of the internet and less on Google, although I think Google is a wonderful company. I have love for Google.

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