There are lots of competitors in search. There is no barrier to entry and no one who uses google search is limited to just using google. I can just as easily use DuckDuckGo or Bing. Also there is nothing wrong with being a monopolist. We give out monopolies in intellectual property all the time (OK bad example).
What Google is is a monopolist in is advertising. There is a huge desire for there to be one market where people selling web ads and people seeking places to advertise can come together. Google owns this market. The barriers to entry for this are now almost insurmountable. Gmail, android, search, google docs, etc., these are just a moat around the castle that is adwords (now google ads). Maybe at one point all these defenses were necessary but now google could stop all of them over night and adwords would live on.
Google is not a monopolist in search! It's adwords (Score:4, Insightful)
What Google is is a monopolist in is advertising. There is a huge desire for there to be one market where people selling web ads and people seeking places to advertise can come together. Google owns this market. The barriers to entry for this are now almost insurmountable. Gmail, android, search, google docs, etc., these are just a moat around the castle that is adwords (now google ads). Maybe at one point all these defenses were necessary but now google could stop all of them over night and adwords would live on.