Google and Microsoft

Some people say that Google is the new Microsoft. They usual do not compliment the business success or benefits to the users, but they mean a new, big monopoly, that will, to put it economically, extract the surplus from you as much as possible.
Google is indeed successful. Google dominates market for search, text ads, has a strong position in mail. Google offers wide range (and fast growing) of services ( list here, just take a look, you would be surprised how many. And Google enters the Instant Messaging market (GTalk), Phones ( Android) etc.
Most of these service benefit experience users, but their simplicity and well-thought design makes them attractive for low-end consumers, too. For example, Wal-Mart is selling $200 PC with Linux preloaded with many Google applications (like Google Documents instead of Microsoft Office suit etc.), and has a big success with it.
As we all know, you cannot please everybody, so some people are scared and are getting angry. Google has access to so much information about you, is becoming so strong and big that it is not hard to imagine it will become (almost) a monopoly, like Microsoft. And such monopolies are not good for consumers (nor even for security, as everybody without firewall, antivirus, anti-spyware and malware running Windows can probably testify).
Having such monopoly in information services would probably be disastrous, right?
No, not really. The reason why Microsoft is a problematic monopoly while Google is not is in the "networking" properties (in economic sense) of their services. Microsoft is building things that you want to use because others are using them. You cannot switch because your documents will not be accessible to others, you could not download as many programs as there are for Windows (who would write them for operating systems nobody is using, right). With Google, this is not true. Not only most services do not have network benefits (like Gmail - you can read your emails anywhere you want, even if I send them from Gmail; you can search with Yahoo and I can search with Google and there is no big problem for either of us because of that), but they are designed to be open. For example, Google Documents allow you to export your documents to wide range of formats so that they are accessible for you colleagues. That is something Microsoft was never serious about.
OK, it is possible that Google is doing the second part (openness) only to enter the market and will stop when it has its monopoly positions. Maybe. But the first part will be still true. I can use any Google services I want and you do not benefit (nor you are harmed) by using other services. Moreover, it is very easy to switch - the only thing it requires is for you to learn some new things (shortcuts, commands etc.) It does not require you to convince your boss that Microsoft Word is really not a good format for in-firm documents.
Therefore, I'm not particularly concerned about Google. Moreover, the part when Google would be fighting with Microsoft over the world dominance would be long (they both had cash to burn) and fun (for the consumers).