The “alliance” against Google
A look at Google from a historical, geopolitical perspective. (Thanks JP). I think there are probably more recent ways to look at Google – I wonder how it compares to big steel or the oil companies or other natural monopolies? Or media empires in the Hearst days? I was told that Carat used to basically own the entire French publishing market – how did they lose that hold (probably gov’t regulation, but I’m too tired to figure it out).
Internet strategy | The alliance against Google | Economist.com
PRINCE KLEMENS VON METTERNICH, foreign minister of the Austrian Empire during the Napoleonic era and its aftermath, would have no trouble recognising Google. To him, the world’s most popular web-search engine would closely resemble the Napoleonic France that in his youth humiliated Austria and Europe’s other powers. Its rivals—Yahoo!, the largest of the traditional web gateways, eBay, the biggest online auction and trading site, and Microsoft, a software empire that owns MSN, a struggling web portal—would look a lot like Russia, Prussia, and Austria. Metternich responded by forging an alliance among those three monarchies to create a “balance of power” against France. Google’s enemies, he might say, ought now to do the same thing.
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