GigaOM Pro

An official inquiry by the FTC calls into question what a monopoly means in the age of the web.

It's Google's turn to face the antitrust spotlight: Although it is not the subject of a formal government case yet, the search behemoth is involved in an official inquiry by the Federal Trade Commission, which is investigating whether Google is distorting the market for web search and search-related advertising. But the technology market often does a good enough job of destroying or disrupting monopolies without the government's help, and in the age of the web, the Google case calls into question what a monopoly even means.