I've been wondering about this. It looks to me that things like Google Analytics are clearly being dumped, i.e. sold at below cost in order to destroy local competitors. Maybe that's not the strict definition of dumping, but it sure looks like it.

Strange, I just finished writing a paper on this topic that I'll read to morrow moring on a radio program in Paris, France.
Apple is already having some problems with the French who want them to open up their Ipod.
For Google, the problem will probably arraise on cultural grounds. Two or three days ago a Chinese paper (http://french.peopledaily.com.cn/Horizon/4364864.html) explained that Baidu, Quaero and Sawafi (an arabic Google) led the same fight against anglo-saxon domination of the cultural world.

All the so called free technologies are set towards the disemination of accrued information at little or no monetary cost. That is certainly key to their mission statement but there is an advertising and privacy cost that competetors could compete against/with by placing a monetary value upon users privacy i.e. With google it's free but your activities on google tools may be used to pay for the service, the competetor can say, you pay cash and we won't invade your privacy when you use our paid for products. Software like the free google (sponsored) SketchUp look severly limited in the utility of it since it's a drastically cut down version of the comercial version... many other companies do the same in the hope that by giving away a taster of their GUI and technology that takers will like the look and feel and take the skills learned into the professional areana and along with those a copy of the pro version. ADAPT OR BECOME EXTINCT DON'T GRIPE ABOUT ETHICS FROM A CORRUPT CAPATALISTIC STANDPOINT Y'all have a nice day now! Ya hear?

IMHO there's a war going on. It has two fronts: control of content and control of connection.

Google is providing free tools, because it wishes to capture your content. 2.6Gb of content is very difficult to move, once its loaded - a captive market. Two other indicators of such strategies are: use of social linking which adds value so long as you stay in the network and the lack of tools to encourage portability of content to other providers.

The issue for any company doing that outside of its national borders, is that control of content and connection, is something that governments care about.

The byproduct of such a strategy, is that companies that seek to make money out of content creation tools will be casualties of the bigger war.

The internet is more and more a journalistic medium. Many countries already limit foreign ownership of newspapers, TV and radio stations, so you are absolutely right to raise this issue.

It was not ethical for Microsoft to drive out companies in its adjacent businesses.

You need to qualify this statement IMO. Not only is it ethical, it's mandatory at a public company. That's what growing a business is all about.

I see no hazard for google in the coming years. It's a giant and it's very hard to get a giant like this for Europe. No matter what the US IT market is more developed than the one in EU.

I'm somewhat disturbed about some of these anti-Google comments. Are you people forgetting that people use their services because they get value from using them?

Just the fact that Google's products make it difficult or impossible for smaller players to compete in the sector is a lousy explanation. It's really too bad for the smaller ones, but I have huge difficulties seeing it as evil or unethical from Google's side. Just the fact that freeware has made it more difficult for some players in some sectors doesn't make freeware evil!

Saying that Google locks people to their services doesn't have a very solid ground either. Let's be honest here! Gmail is the first larger email provider that let's you both download your email and change your email service provider for free (forwarding for free).

And the problem in downloading 2.5GB of email? What is this?? I pop my email every once in a while to my computer to have an archive locally, too. It's common sense! And even if I wouldn't it wouldn't take that long to download 2.5GB. What kind of connections do you guys have, anyways?

It's good to be wary about the privacy issues and keep an eye on how Google handles the data it collects (having said that I know that you can't really know for sure). But it's not as if MS, AOL, or other big players were any better.

This brings me back to the claim that Google is locking people. Gmail is not the only service where it has finally let people keep their content. Google Reader has OPML import, and Export, too.

A better and the latest case is Picasa Web Albums. It allows users to very easily download all of their photos back to their computers. And allow their friends/family to do that, too. This is was a huge annoyance in just about all of the photo services on the market for a long time. Many of the services still at worst case billing you for your own photos if you want them back! Now, THAT'S evil.

This doesn't mean that Google is perfect. Far from it. It surely doesn't make all information that people type into their systems easily available for the users to download or transfer to other systems. Bookmarks, blogs, etc. But again, the other big players aren't any better, but there are some that are surely worse.

It's very important that people understand what they're getting into. And there are many who don't. I think that's a big problem.