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Steven Hodson asks why Google gets a free ride on this whole accusation of monopoly thing. It’s a great question, and a sentiment that I’ve heard growing ever since the privacy concerns began surfacing after Google Street View (and one that will likely get asked more and more under growing ad privacy concerns and OpenSocial domination). Microsoft, since I was but knee high to a web-server, has always been the subject of ridicule and scorn because of an alleged monopoly they’ve held on the market.

Meanwhile, if my server logs are in any way indicative of what is going on in the wilds of the web, Google has achieved what could charitably be called the lion’s share of the search business, or more accurately be called complete and total dominance of search.

What gets Google the pass? It is easy to point to their good PR, and their “do no evil” moniker. Shoemoney blog points to their philanthropic donation of $200+ million to Mozilla. If that’s not charitable enough for you, you can always take a gander at Google.org, and their contributions to climate change and public health research. With prominent positive PR like that, it’s easy to overlook any negative or monopolistic moves Google might make.

To answer directly, though, the question of monopolies by Google, Microsoft, or anyone else in the tech business, I took myself back to basic economics class and did some research on the terminology and the math behind it. I wanted to peg this answer as best I could, and get a grasp of what our terminology means in the most literal sense. A monopoly is defined by a persistent situation where there is only one provider of a product or service in a particular market. Further, one of the main dangers, at least on the consumer side, is that monopolies inhibit innovation, slow down advancements, as well as give the monopoly holders license to raise rates for the product to heights that are considered gouging.

I could go on and on with more econ-speak, and analyze supply and demand, and mathematically determine whether Google is facing a horizontal demand curve or not, but let’s back this up and attempt to keep this at least near-laymen terminology as possible.

First, of all the allegations that can be made against Google, you can’t say they don’t innovate and advance technology. Their entire corporate culture is centered around “blue sky research and development,” while continually working to improve their core services. This week’s OpenSocial initiative should be evidence enough to prove that point.

The bottom line is, though, where Google dominates markets is not where a product or service is being sold. Take search, for example. Search is not the product - you and your search queries are the product. Those, in turn, are sold to the advertisers. In the world of advertising (or even the world of online advertising), Google is not the sole competitor. There are many other very strong competitors in online advertising. While Google does own a significant portion (or even majority share) of a certain types of the online advertising market, it in no way can be called a monopoly.

In essence, I think the biggest reason why Google gets a pass on being accused of monopoly is that by the very definition of the word, there is no monopoly.

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