I loved monopoly as a kid! I loved buying properties, making that money when people landed on my spots and controlling the game! Muah-hah-ha-ha! It wasn’t until my 9th grade economics class though that I learned that a monopoly was a real thing (thanks a lot mediocre private school education). A monopoly is when a person or corporation has a corner on the market and controls the industry. When I think of media monopolies, the first thing that comes to mind is Google! Google has become a Titan in the media industry. They have a corner on the search engine market, so much that we turned their name into a verb. “Hold on. I’ll google it.” No one says, “I’ll Yahoo it,” or, “I’ll Bing it.” Nope. When I am looking for LOLcatz, pictures of celebrity hair cuts, a good recipe for veal, or the phone number for the nearest Thai restaurant, I Google it. And so does the majority of the world because Google controls over 90% of the worldwide search engine market.
Google also controls my email, my YouTube account (since they own YouTube now), my search engine and my heart! And I loved Google long before they signed a deal with the devil making Google the primary for Safari searching and maps on Apple products. Even now with search engine options – Google, Yahoo or Bing – No one ever picks the other two. The sheer order of the options proves who is number one. Yep Google is my main squeeze!
However, not everyone shares my affinity for Goggle. Haters gonna hate. The Feds were investigating whether or not Google had indeed become a monopoly and Google Chairman Eric Schmidt actually believes they have! However, he claimed they wouldn’t abuse their status like Microsoft supposedly did. “We get the lessons of our corporate predecessors,” “We also get that it’s natural for you to have questions about our business. [But] one company’s past need not be another company’s future.
So, what IS in Google’s future? Hopefully for them, more popularity, more growth and more money. Popularity doesn’t always translate to dollars, though. Google only rates at number 44 out of 500 on CNN’s Most Profitable Companies. Other tech companies surpassing it on the list were Apple (of course) and (to my utter surprise) Microsoft. USA TODAY said this of Microsoft, “The software company is no longer considered a leader in the tech world, a position taken by public corporations like Google (GOOG) . Yet, Microsoft’s Windows and business franchises still have huge profit margins. Microsoft’s net income is greater than that of almost all other tech firms.” Google might not be a financial giant yet, but I’m sure it’s well on its way!
Sources:
http://microsoft-news.com/google-admits-to-being-a-monopoly/
http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2013/01/20/10-profitable-companies-2013/1848581/
http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune500/2012/performers/companies/profits/