https://assets.entrepreneur.com/content/16x9/822/1411580979-google-achilles-heel.jpg



>In just 10 years, the world’s five largest companies by market capitalization have all changed, save for one: Microsoft. Exxon Mobil, General Electric, Citigroup and Shell Oil are out and Apple, Alphabet (the parent company of Google), Amazon and Facebook have taken their place.

>They’re all tech companies, and each dominates its corner of the industry: Google has an 88 percent market share in search advertising, Facebook (and its subsidiaries Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger) owns 77 percent of mobile social traffic and Amazon has a 74 percent share in the e-book market. In classic economic terms, all three are monopolies.

The article makes a comparison between google and the telecom companies back in the early 20th century. The example was it's better to have one phone line in buildings than 20 different lines running all over the city cluttering it up. The government called these public utilities and allowed the monopoly as long as they were regulated by government.

It an interesting proposal to say the least. Google does have a monopoly on search results but I'm not entire convinced making it a public utility would benefit the public in anyway. In fact Google might actually want to be a public utility because then it doesn't have to worry about competition.

If we want to level the playing field how about we start by making google pay more than 3% in income taxes.

Please share your thoughts.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/22/opinion/sunday/is-it-time-to-break-up-google.html?_r=0