Should Google's search index be made public?

One of the hot topics of the past couple of years is the notion that the tech giants are becoming too powerful. Companies like Google and Facebook capture huge amounts of data and have relatively little competition. In the West, Google is pretty much the only search engine that matters and it's very hard for newcomers to catch up.

A new piece over at Bloomberg argues that Google shouldn't be broken up, but that the search giant's database should be turned into a kind of public commons:

There is precedent for this both in law and in Google’s business practices. When private ownership of essential resources and services—water, electricity, telecommunications, and so on—no longer serves the public interest, governments often step in to control them. One particular government intervention is especially relevant to the Big Tech dilemma: the 1956 consent decree in the U.S. in which AT&T agreed to share all its patents with other companies free of charge. As tech investor Roger McNamee and others have pointed out, that sharing reverberated around the world, leading to a significant increase in technological competition and innovation.

It's an interesting idea, and it will definitely be interesting to see how governments will tighten the screws on Internet giants like Google and Facebook over the coming years.