"Entry into the online marketplace is in theory open to virtually anyone with sufficient technological know-how and a viable business model."

What blogger needs a 'business model'?

This whole article forgets the profound debt this nation owes to private, non-profit and free websites, like ours http://gentleseas.blogspot.com/ .

Where we plumb the depths of spookology and go where no man (or woman) has ever ventured - at all, ever.

From our little laptop and website we bring the world to the informationally unwashed - as a good Sovereign should :)

Yours Plantagenet
(Using the Royal 'We')

Oh dear.

If this is typical of the output of an "independent public policy think tank based in Canberra", there is little wonder that our government is so ignorant of the mechanics of the internet.

The article starts from nowhere, goes nowhere, makes no discernible point, and ends with a non sequitur...

"Put simply, if there were greater diversity in web search, then there would be greater diversity in online commerce."

Nothing in the article even hints at this conclusion. In fact, it even fails to make a firm connection between web search and online commerce, instead making the totally invalid supposition that the only path to online commerce is via "web search".

I suspect that the author has no background on the subject, and has limited his research to a cursory wander through Google.

This, for example, is categorically inappropriate, when applied to the internet:

"‘Network effects’ in industries with economies of scale mean that tiny advantages in the early stages of development can lead to market dominance once a market matures."

The inescapable reality of the internet is that its very structure mitigates the power of the network effect. Microsoft's monopoly arose from its control over Windows technology, and the network effect - build for Windows, and you'll have the biggest market - was self-perpetuating. Internet technology belongs to no-one, and the barriers to entry are correspondingly low.

Google and Facebook are absolutely *not* examples of the network effect creating dominance. Google earned its place in online advertising as the result of its underlying product, which was vastly superior to its competitors.

Who remembers Lycos, or AltaVista? Classic examples of the situation where "tiny advantages in the early stages of development" emphatically did not "lead to market dominance once a market matures".

Similarly Facebook overtook MySpace through the superiority of its user experience. The network effect - which drew 100 million users to MySpace in only 30 months - was insufficient to dominate the market.

I wonder if Murdoch used this particular "think tank" when he paid over half a billion dollars for MySpace?

Wouldn't surprise me.

"Who remembers Lycos, or AltaVista?"

Or even Veronica before the web was foisted upon the net?

Or when html was only used in floppy disk software documentation?

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=12503#216136

Pericles, & the NBN has nothing to do with gaining monopoly control over the net. No Matriarchal Communist Regime would do any censorship, would they?