> What does that mean?

It means exactly that: it has near-monopoly on search. On mobile the situation is close to to complete monopoly.

> Woudl you say HackerNews has a monopoly on tech chatter? Sure seems dominant, but nobody is forcing anyone to use HN.

Google literally pays Apple $20 billion a year to force people to use Google only. But that is quite beside the point. The definition of monopoly does not include "forces you to use it".

> It means exactly that: it has near-monopoly on search. On mobile the situation is close to to complete monopoly.

Would you say HackerNews is a monopoly? Any activity that the user has a choice to use something else cannot be a monopoly.

> Google literally pays Apple $20 billion a year to force people to use Google only

Apple pays TSMC $XXX billion dollars to get preferential treatment, but that doesnt make TSMC a monopoly or even Apple a monopoly.

Just because you can use minor players does not mean Google isn't a near-monopoly.

By all accounts Google Search is 85-90% of global search engine market share.

Chrome is "only" 70%.

Edit For anti-competitive purposes and anti-trust regulations the main word is market dominance.