Is there such thing as a good monopoly?
The technology world is no doubt aware of Google’s seemingly unstoppable leap into existing markets. On my previous Google rants to beware of Google and their evil, and perhaps their latest and greatest (is it?) innovation Google Wave, I have kept my polite contempt at their progress unconcealed. Today before I release my upcoming post on a review of Google Wave I want to question if there is such a thing as a good monopoly?
Google isn’t seen as a bad company. Its motto is “don’t be evil” and their offices seem to be the envy of the labour market. They seem to have a fun approach to developing and see themselves as engineers with an itch to scratch. A recent slashdot article suggested that Google was attempting to take on iTunes with an upcoming “Google Audio” product – and that made me think whether or not what they’re doing would be seen in a good or bad light.
The perfectly “economically” rational consumer will simply pick the one with better value for money given their income and financial priorities. However assuming the extreme that every single market in the world had the same single company as its monopoly – how would you as a consumer react?
It’s quite interesting as Google is in the technology industry right now – the resources used here are quite mobile between markets and there’s plenty of expertise to be shared. Google as a monopoly could offer us much in terms of economies of scale. Given their well ingrained corporate culture the internal diseconomies of scale would be kept to a minimum and services still be a personable as ever. There is nothing stopping them from branching out in the market with these good qualities and will (this is all assumption) be able to provide appropriate services for all kinds of needs, save for the most extreme of niche markets. So given all this, if everything about their service is great, just that they have huge power over every market (assuming they use that influence responsibly and ethically) – what will consumers do?
If I happened to belong in one of those extreme niche markets, I’d continue using my own service providers without a care in the world. If I did however conflict with a service that Google provided, would I purposely roll my own solution despite the higher complexity and cost or would I go with the crowd? If the service depended on integrating with others, assuming that Google didn’t abuse their monopolist position there should be no problem – so you can safely disregard integration as a barrier. I personally would go roll my own solution.
But we aren’t simple minded people who are content with just what we need – no, the question I’m really asking is whether or not this’ll spark a consumer rebellion?
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