Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think it's difficult to make the anti-trust case against Google. Unlike Microsoft's control of the desktop, people choose to use Google everyday. It would be so very very easy to switch to Bing tomorrow (even easier than choosing not to use Facebook!) but people have chosen not to switch. Just because you have a lot of marketshare doesn't mean you are a monopoly. It's also quite easy to say that consumers will bene…
> It would be so very very easy to switch to Bing tomorrow (even easier than choosing not to use Facebook!) but people have chosen not to switch. I assume that Bing also offers free e-mail with as many features, a calendar system, an equivalent of Google Reader, etc? Unless it can deliver all of that, it wouldn't be a very easy switch for me - whereas ditching Facebook is literally something I contemplate every time…
But all these Google products are hard to switch from because they are kick-ass. It's hard for me to switch away, not because Google has me trapped, but because the competition sucks.
You can export all your data from Google and import it wherever you want. I did so with Google Reader (since you mentioned), but I came back to it since it's better than any desktop client I tried.
But this doesn't mean Google has lock-in, unless you extend the definition to include "being better than the competition" and that shouldn't trigger antitrust regulation; and if it did, you could say that the system is terribly broken.