There is an inherent difficulty in determining when a company's competitive actions might merely harm less effective competitors (that's a good thing) and when it might harm consumers and the market in general.

Since Google gains its heft and irreplaceability with advertisers through its control of user data, anything that increases user power to withhold that data inevitably will also reduce that monopoly power, as well.

Congress and the FCC need to confront the looming monopoly environment most consumers now face for broadband service. If they don't reverse course and start dealing with the reality they've created, even the best conditions will be meaningless.

Congress and the FCC have put themselves at this juncture where they now have to choose between taking strong steps the biggest companies abhor, in order to enable competition -- or actually regulating a broadband monopoly.

Most Americans don't think about antitrust law when they look at their cable bill, flip channels on TV, or worry about what their favorite website knows about them. But they should.

Since March 2011, Bloomberg has been trying to hold the Comcast-NBCU media behemoth to the promises it made, and agreed to, in order to complete the takeover that resulted in one of the biggest media companies in history.

The idea of big companies continuing to control their markets, and control the behavior of consumers, continues to march on. Even now, two major deals are proceeding apace, one in telecom and one in the entertainment world.

It's been a big day for those of us who have been making the case that Google steers users not to the most relevant products and services, but to its own services.

Hopefully, all of the companies involved in the "patent wars" can return their focus to innovating and competing on the merits of their products.