The problem with this is that in a lot of areas Google enters then wipes out the competition by offering the service for free. It's extremely hard for competito

The problem with this is that in a lot of areas Google enters then wipes out the competition by offering the service for free. It's extremely hard for competitors to gain a foothold in a market when a huge competitor is giving the product away for free. Except it's not free; they earn a profit by having you use their services or else they wouldn't do it. They push competitors out of the market, then either start charging or make money off filling the service with ads (have you taken a look at google search results lately? about 1/3 of it is now ads). It's the equivalent of selling a physical product at a loss until you run competitors out of business (or discourage them from ever entering the market in the first place). What happens when there are no viable alternatives to "go elsewhere"? As others have said, network effects have already turned a lot of internet companies into monopolies. If I don't like using Adwords, do I really have an alternative at this point?