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Google: Too big for its own boots?


With Google in the news because of its collation of private information about householders as it undertook its camera-work as part of Street View, The New York Times poses the not unimportant question in "Sure, It’s Big. But Is That Bad?" of whether Google, being the mammoth corporation it is,with significant reach into so much of our activities on line, needs to be curbed.

"Can monopolies exist online, when competition is only a click away? What constitutes anti-competitive behavior in the complex networked economy, where the very size of big companies allows them to operate more efficiently, and thus grow even bigger? Are consumers harmed if various services are bundled together, but everything is free?

Google executives acknowledge the scrutiny. “We’re getting larger, and we have been very disruptive within some industries,” says Alan Davidson, head of United States public policy at Google. “We know we have a giant bull’s-eye on our backs.”

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