Google is becoming quite more immense even when compared to other pseudo-monopolies such as AOL Time Warner and Microsoft. I mean consider what Google has. Yes, a great websearch engine. But also...
news (searchable), blogs (searchable), images (searchable), ever-growing email (searchable), maps, addresses (searchable), scholarly articles (searchable), dictionary/encyclopaedia (searchable), calculations, satellite images, three-dimensional earth imagery, shopping comparisons, personalized homepage (templates+personal additions), language translations, catalogs (searchable), books (searchable), university information (searchable), movie listings (searchable), transportation (searchable), personalized advertising and affiliates, television and video searches and so forth.
When you consider the scope of how they gather information, handle it, and distribute it to users, it's really quite staggering how much influence they have (and continue to develop). At this point, they're coming close to perfecting the major information forks that the internet was originally most used for. Where they go from there is going to be interesting.
