Fears of monopolies 'buying out their competition' and restricting consumer choice.

[John_James]

@Anenome

I thought I was agreeing with you, so where’s this coming from.

It’s coming from a place called “reality” where “false” doesn’t automatically mean agreement with whatever other scenario you come up with.

I’ll give you an analogy. Pretend someone named “Kakagu” spoke directly to me and said “Your name is Josh.” And I responded “False. See my name right above this post.”

Then someone else comes in—let’s call him “Anenome”—and says: “Okay, let’s rephrase. Your name is Joshua.”

Simply because you agree with my assertion that Kakagu isn’t correct in his statement, doesn’t mean that I agree with whatever fallacious statement you come up with, just because it also maintains that Kakagu isn’t correct.

Having 90% indeed does not give you a monopoly, unless the word itself has no meaning, for mono = 1, and 90% + 10% clearly means two market entities.

Ah, clearly. Except for the fact that most people tend to use something called a “dictionary” when looking to find the commonly accepted definitions of words. Here’s what a “dictionary” says:

mo·nop·o·ly[muh-nop-uh-lee]

noun, plural mo·nop·o·lies.

1. exclusive control of a commodity or service in a particular market, or a control that makes possible the manipulation of prices.

The more you know.

Microsoft maybe, for office, for Windows.

a) Open Office, for Windows. Oops. Guess you’re wrong again.

b) Obviously you didn’t read the link I provided titled “the Microsoft case”

These near-monopolies are inevitably maintained by low-price and high service. Google for email?

Ever heard of Yahoo Mail? Hotmail? Live Mail? Hushmail? AIM Mail? Shortmail? Myway? Juno? Zoho? iCloud? Bigstring? Gaweb? Inbox.com? Lavabit? Facebook?

But then there’s lateral competition. Suppose someone gained a monopoly on steel and raised the price astronomically. Industries can switch to aluminum, fiberglass, etc.

Anyone who actually did achieve a monopoly in one narrow market would never come close to achieving a lateral monopoly on all the things that could be substituted for the thing they have a monopoly in.

Suppose MS raises the price of Windows to $5,000, in swoops Apple, in swoops Linux, etc. There’s no monopoly there. Suppose Gmail begins charging, Hotmail and a thousand others are there to pick up the slack.

You obviously didn’t look at any of the links I provided. Perhaps you should do that in the future before attempting to come back with essential regurgitations like this.