there seems to be a flaw with rebecca's only example. she seems to imply that google is responsible for the conference tables existence, which is most certainly not true. if anything, Google in this case is responsible for restricting local markets, and directing traffic to foreign ones. Conference tables have always been needed, and have always been made (most often sourced locally), Google didn't create the conference table business, it just helped direct conference table buyers to this one particular site. that seems to be to restricting market freedom, not expanding it.

Agreed for that example, especially in light of what Google later became. Pre-Google, what would the custom conference table guy do? Presumably cold-call and place ads in trade papers. Not an insurmountable problem, assuming there's demand. All Google does is in this scenario is put you in front of office managers searching for "conference table".

But I think the larger point stands - the real change is in indexing the public internet, making it possible (in theory) for a small player to reach the larger world without the capital investment that would've previously required.

Reality is not living up to the early optimism over the so called "long tail", but I believe that only reinforces her point about the dangers of centralizing the internet.

certainly. centralising is bad, but this article seemed more like a google shill, rather than debate about keeping/making the internet decentralised. i mean, for the majority of it she was talking about google being a white knight.