actually, i think it's pretty spot-on.

just like wal-mart, google is trying to pull the floor from underneath it's competitors by making "unbeatable" offerings. wal mart does it by economy of scale, google has it even easier because they get their revenues through something else alltogether (just adding to that with yet another ad-based service).

and this process will hurt product quality and diversity in the long run, just like it happened with _every_monopoly_ the world has seen so far. as soon as the monopoly is established, the company in control can start to decrease quality to maximize profits, because the customers have no choice any longer and are forced to accept that.
I'm sure google navigation misses many of the features Garmin or TomTom offer with their devices, but people will just accept the loss of these features, because google is "free". soon, other companies will stop offering additional features and give away a similarly dumbed down navigation. -> quality loss.

take internet search for example - google has the monopoly there for some time now, and search result quality has decreased significantly during the last 5 years or so. more advertisements, more sponsored links.
(what about them anti-trust laws in the states anyways? no one considering filing suit?)


while that might be true, they are not even close to the position google is in. google is already actively mining data without your knowledge or approval. and if you don't care about that, then... take off the pink glasses


edit:
by the way, that link you posted was about nokia's own employees privacy, and NOT about customers. so it's not really relevant here. i'll bet you google does this (legally) in the states already.