Imagine, for a moment, if every shop in every town was located within a giant Tesco. Imagine further if Tesco controlled the position of each shop within these stores and retailers had to pay for the best spots. There would be howls of outrage. Yet this is the sort of power that Google exercises over the internet. More than 90 per cent of online searches are now made on the US website, meaning the company effectively controls digital access to British business.

Of course, the key difference is that consumers are choosing to visit Google rather than being forced to do so but the extent to which that is the result of familiarity and default settings rather than the company’s brilliance is open to question.