Rough Type: Nicholas Carr's Blog: What Tim O'Reilly gets wrong about the cloud

"The fact that my neighbor uses Google's search engine, rather than Yahoo's or Microsoft's, does not increase the value of Google's search engine to me, at least not in the way that my neighbor's use of the telephone network or of Facebook would increase the value of those services to me. The network effect underpins and explains the value of the telephone network and Facebook; it does not underpin or explain the value of Google. (Indeed, if everyone other than myself stopped using Google's search engine tomorrow, that would not decrease Google's value to me as a user.)"