For anyone who has wondered how it’s possible to get so much stuff from web companies free or at too-good-to-be-true prices — whether Google searching, Facebook socializing, Uber riding or Amazon shopping — Jean Tirole, the new Nobel Prize winner in economics, has an answer.

In 2002, two years before Google went public or Facebook was founded, he wrote that Internet-era companies operate as two-sided platforms, with consumers on one side and software developers or advertisers on the other. Even if tech entrepreneurs have never read his work, they are referencing it when they throw around words like “platform” and “network effect.”

He also said that industries should be regulated differently depending on their distinct characteristics. Many Internet companies, for instance, give their products away free, which means that antitrust law built on pricing is irrelevant. But a result is they grow so fast that they can quickly become monopolies.

“He’s helping us think about what is one of the greatest challenges of our time, how to deal with what feel like friendly monopolists,” said Tim Wu, a Columbia Law School professor who studies Internet policy and antitrust. “Amazon, Google and the others give us all this stuff for free or lower prices, so we love them, but are they dangerous in ways we don’t always see?”