[pekk]

Google produced more relevant results than Altavista. That's about it. They didn't build or save the internet. Without them, search engines would have improved anyway and we'd be just fine. Google was never a charity and we don't have to protect such corporate behemoths from criticism.

[bgw]

Search engines have improved. Bing, DDG, Yahoo are all better than Altavista. But none of them are as good as Google. That being said, no entity is above criticism. The monopoly criticism just doesn't fit though, unless we're redefining what that word means.