Rand Fishkin had a great post a few days ago about how Google’s monopoly can hurt us marketers. I thought he was making some valid points, but here is my take on Google’s inevitable journey to world dominance. If you look at the numbers from various sources (including Rand’s), you are going to realize that Google is in such a dominant position that it almost looks helpless for Microsoft and Yahoo!. Google has been having a lot of success as they understand the search business more than their current rivals. Google understands that it’s just not about making more money but also providing value to users in return. So Google has been decent enough to respect its searchers and don’t insult their intelligence as other companies do.

I do agree with Rand that Google can get to a point that it can dictate price. That’s the classic theory of monopolies. You can do almost whatever you want as you are the only game in town. The UFC does it in the fighting world, so it happens even today. But I would argue that the Internet industry is very different from those classic monopolized industries. The industry is just too dynamic for someone to create a long-lasting monopoly.

I also don’t believe a Google run monopoly (however long it lasts) can actually dictate outrageous things. The Congress and the government would love to jump on the Internet folks and put heavier regulations on us all. I doubt Google will risk getting in the regulation game. I do agree with Rand that power corrupts even the best companies. But I don’t believe Google can sustain a monopoly without staying ahead of potential competitors.

We are talking about the Internet industry, and the game is just changing so fast that Google’s search system could become irrelevant in a short period of time (I am not saying it will). Research data has shown that folks are not really loyal to one search engine, and they take their business where they feel they get the biggest bang for their time spent on site. Google can’t keep everyone happy even today. That means, they won’t be able to keep folks happy if they stop innovating.

As someone who has been involved in the SEO and Paid search industry for long, I would love to see a day when folks don’t get paid for just putting keywords in their clients’ title tags. I would love to see Google develop ways to make the SEO industry irrelevant. But we are years away from that. I actually believe that a Google monopoly is not such a bad thing for top SEOs. Having said that, I don’t believe Google can rest any second as the industry is moving fast. You are either on the train or your left behind (just take a look at Microsoft).