Yes, you're missing something, but it's a common thing to miss. What's illegal and immoral isn't the mere possession of a monopoly. What's illegal and immoral is the abuse of a monopoly position to shut out competition, corner the market, then raise prices above what a free market would bear.
Microsoft was a monopoly because they sold 95+% of the operating systems on computers. Microsoft was convicted not of being a monopoly, but of abusing the monopoly.
It is also interesting to observe that while Microsoft may have done some immoral things to obtain that monopoly (depending on how you look at it), that doesn't make the things they did before they had a monopoly illegal, or at least not for reasons of having a monopoly. Special scrutiny and rules are put in place for monopolists. Thus, it became illegal to bundle IE with Windows in some places, but that was a special ruling for MS only as a consequence of their monopoly status, it was not a general legal restriction against bundling.
The claim that Google is a monopoly on search is simply an observation that they are servicing the vast, vast majority of searches. It does not logically follow that they are doing anything wrong; that is something that must be established separately. I for one don't see much evidence for Google abusing their monopoly in illegal or immoral ways. (Most of my complaints would center more around resting on their laurels, such as with their notoriously bad customer service, but there's nothing particularly illegal or immoral about that....) It is also valid to be personally concerned about the presence of a monopoly, even if it is not doing anything particularly wrong.
The common category collapse of "monopoly" and "illegal monopoly" makes it hard to understand what's really going on.
Microsoft was a monopoly because they sold 95+% of the operating systems on computers. Microsoft was convicted not of being a monopoly, but of abusing the monopoly.
It is also interesting to observe that while Microsoft may have done some immoral things to obtain that monopoly (depending on how you look at it), that doesn't make the things they did before they had a monopoly illegal, or at least not for reasons of having a monopoly. Special scrutiny and rules are put in place for monopolists. Thus, it became illegal to bundle IE with Windows in some places, but that was a special ruling for MS only as a consequence of their monopoly status, it was not a general legal restriction against bundling.
The claim that Google is a monopoly on search is simply an observation that they are servicing the vast, vast majority of searches. It does not logically follow that they are doing anything wrong; that is something that must be established separately. I for one don't see much evidence for Google abusing their monopoly in illegal or immoral ways. (Most of my complaints would center more around resting on their laurels, such as with their notoriously bad customer service, but there's nothing particularly illegal or immoral about that....) It is also valid to be personally concerned about the presence of a monopoly, even if it is not doing anything particularly wrong.
The common category collapse of "monopoly" and "illegal monopoly" makes it hard to understand what's really going on.