Google's Monopolism Promotes Business and Societal Capitalism

The question of the week was "Who controls the network?" and in response I focused my presentation on Google's monopolism promoting business and societal capitalism for themselves, and even for it's users. Many critics argue that Google is becoming a huge monopoly in the network, and argues that the monopolism of Google is bad and harmful to it's users. I focused my arguemnt around the idea that Google's monopolism and monopolies in general are a good thing and not harmful as these critics suggest. 

While the Internet is quickly replacing television and film as the new "glamour medium," Google is becoming "the giant of the Internet." Beginning as solely a web search engine in 1998, Google has grown immensly and has acquired over 160 companies as of today. As the network's number one search engine, ad-serving busines, e-mail service, online video distributor, and more, Google's seperation from competition by control of the network has resulted in its business and societal progression and capitalism. Today, Google is the number one search engine in the network, an email service known as Gmail, a scholarly search engive known as Google Scholar, has aquired YouTube, announced the Android which was the first open platform for mobile device, and is an online drive system known as Google Drive. Google is also the dominant search advertising firm. This includes the ads  on the side of search results, the Adsense service that places clickable ads on other websites, adn the display ads that are ditributed across the web through Google's DoubleClick subsidairy. Beyond Google's size and many acquisitions, its unique characteristics of the search advertising industry also heped to encourage the development of its anticompetition monopoly power. This anticompetition monopoly power of Google is what many critics argue against, but Peter Thiel, the Co-Founder of Pay Pal argues that monopolies are a good thing, and I agree with his standpoint in my argument. (You can hear Thiel's argument here: http://www.wsj.com/video/peter-thiel-why-monopolies-are-a-good-thing/3D9A5E99-02E5-42EB-8B10-ED8E37FA26DD.html).

Thiel argues basically that monopolies are a good thing because they result in CAPITALISM for the busines and for it's users of the network. 

In the discussion, one of the questions that I presented to the class was "Which company do you think was Google's best decision in acquisition in terms of profitibility?" The class discussed that Google's best acquisition was that of the Android. In my research I found that the Android has actually been the number one selling phone recently, even over the iPhone. My second question that I presented to the class was "What future do you see for Google? Do you think that it will remain on top, or will another Internet company eventually rise above?" Students in the class answered in that they think that IF another comapny does rise above Google, they see that company being Facebook. In my research for my case study I also found that Facebook is acutally Google's biggest compeitior in the market currently, in that Google has long surpassed its other "competitors" such as Yahoo! and Bing. 

In conclusion, Googles vast ownership and impressive amount of acquistitions in the market has resulted in its criticism of monopolistic power, but hypercompetitive businesses are bad businesses because they are not capitalistic. As the networks number one saerch engine, ad-serving business, e-mail service, online video distributor, and more, Google's separation from the competition by control of the network has resulted in its business and societal capitalism. 

Helpful links to my presentation:

http://www.wsj.com/video/peter-thiel-why-monopolies-are-a-good-thing/3D9A5E99-02E5-42EB-8B10-ED8E37FA26DD.html