It is easy to forget that every development in the history of the American information industry-from the telephone to radio to film-once existed in an open and chaotic marketplace inhabited by entrepreneurs and utopians, just as the Internet does today. Each of these, however, grew to be dominated by a monopolist or cartel. In this pathbreaking book, Tim Wu asks: will the Internet follow the same fate? Could the Web-the entire flow of American information-come to be ruled by a corporate leviathan in possession of "the master switch"?

Analyzing the strategic maneuvers of today's great information powers-Apple, Google, and an eerily resurgent AT&T-Wu uncovers a time-honored pattern in which invention begets industry and industry begets empire. He shows how a battle royale for Internet's future is brewing, and this is one war we dare not tune out