Google on roids?

Google has made an unprecedented presence on the World Wide Web. It grew out of founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin's small garage office in the suburb of Menlo Park, California and grew to "20 billion dollars in only a mere month." Even since then, they have grown to be the major go-to search engine. Google however, has made a huge impact on today's web culture by redefining what a search engine does and is capable of. In fact, the article states that Google changed it status as a search company to a media company with its additions of Google maps, Gmail, Google Books, Google T.V. etc. Google has expanded the capability and bounds of a single company to essentially have no bounds. That is at least what Google would want if we lived in a perfect world. Unfortunately, or rather fortunately for other companies, we don't and Google won't be able gain a monopoly in every single market they seem to conquer like let's say, the e-book market. Google has an extensive selection of e-books on Google Books but they will have to combat other big conglomerates such as book giant Amazon who offers unsurpassed customer interaction with their customer reviews feature. Some people just visit Amazon to look at reader's reviews. Google will have to come up with ideas so new and fresh feature before it can conquer this market. Even so, it will be a challenge with tougher government regulations that could be in store for them.

As of now, I would say that Google doesn't have a monopoly despite all of the extensive areas of media that they cover. For most of their services there are alternative. People can use MapQuest for map info, Amazon for e-books, virtually every online media company has an email account system, and Apple has a TV service in one form or another. It's true that Google provides these services in a good way, but there is still a loyal and strong cohort of followers that have their allegiance aligned with these other companies which will, in effect, hamper Google's ability to gain a monopoly in any of the markets they currently serve. Given the services that Google offers and what they have in place now, it seems that they are just improving on already tapped-on ideas such as e-books which have been around since the early 2000's. They would need to come up with some idea that is so radical or strike some revolutionary deal that would enable them to take-over the management of some service. Yet, it seems highly unlikely that they will gain what Microsoft had with being the sole producer of operating systems for PC's prior to Linux. With that being said, Google's most promising technology seems to be Android with its use of open-source software to allow anyone who can think of an application for their mobile device, to add it. They are making dreams become a reality. It seems that Google has found their niche, and that it is to put the control in the hands of the customer. However, could the masses of people with this powerful technology within the grasp of their hands cause this to be a problem for corporations (including Google) in the future?