^{Democracy & Technology Blog} “Google steps up push to rule the web”

A writer for the Financial Times takes aim at Google for … what?

Google’s ambitions are so sweeping, the theatres in which its campaign is being advanced so dispersed, that it is not always easy to trace the outlines of the broader war it is fighting….
As Allen Weiner, an analyst at Gartner, points out, Google could eventually assume a truly scary cross-media dominance. All the information about user behaviour collected across multiple cloud services, mixed with its core search data, could give it better insight into users than anyone – and the ability to match that with personalised advertising campaigns delivered across different services and devices.

Okay, Google is trying to compete. It is trying to be disruptive. It hopes to win. What’s wrong with that?
Although not always the case in Europe, in America the antitrust laws do not discourage competition on the merits. In this country, companies who become successful as a result of superior skill, foresight and industry are not supposed to be punished. Punishing successful firms not guilty of bad acts is a recipe for stagnation.
The writer’s provocative rhetoric aside, Europe is very familiar with the concept of stagnation — even if it doesn’t comprehend the causes.