101–110 of 128 posts
I don't think they are monopolies. I use DuckDuckGo for search & Twitter for social media. I find discovering new things/People on Twitter more interesting than the sclerotic family/friends stuff on Facebook.
See also: Bing, Instagram, Snapchat, Yahoo (though Yahoo now uses Google because Google was better).
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> a monopoly should be judged by lock-in, not by raw market percentage Monopolies are predominantly, in anti-trust law, judged by market (pricing) power, not raw market percentage. This directly relates to whether there is effective competition in the market—which may be slightly different than your question of whether buyers can switch to an alternative; it is more whether the alternative(s) are empirically substitu…
>Monopolies are predominantly, in anti-trust law, judged by market (pricing) power, not raw market percentage. In theory sure. In practice, explain the Whole Foods/Wild Oats case, in which Trader Joe's/Albertson's/etc could start carrying the goods overnight. >This directly relates to whether there is effective competition in the market—which may be slightly different than your question of whether buyers can switch t…
The whole point of the network effect, is that there can be more than zero competitors who even have a superior product, and it really doesn't matter.
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The service google and facebook provide is access to their captured audience. In the case of google that is the advertisement market with search and the platform of youtube. It is rather commonly known that many video producers are extremely unhappy using youtube but feel locked in since thats where the audience is, and the audience is equally locked in since youtube is where the producers are. New video platforms po…
> not based on merit but based on market capture I'm not sure about that distinction. Users prefer something about YouTube compared to it's competitors. That's merit, even if it's not the particular merits that content creators would prefer.
It's quite a broken concept of merit. It's the kind of concept of "merit" where an offering with superior content and UX could come along, but it wouldn't matter because of network effects.
The fact that so many content creators so badly want a different platform than YouTube to come into being (or for YouTube to change their practices) but can't afford to move -- this circumstance is very telling. Likewise the number of users who despise Facebook, but can't afford to leave.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> a monopoly should be judged by lock-in, not by raw market percentage Monopolies are predominantly, in anti-trust law, judged by market (pricing) power, not raw market percentage. This directly relates to whether there is effective competition in the market—which may be slightly different than your question of whether buyers can switch to an alternative; it is more whether the alternative(s) are empirically substitu…
I think the interesting thing is that the users aren't the customers in these examples. Anti trust law would be concerned with the advertisers and fb/google. Not the users. I suppose you could make the argument that fb/google are monopolies because the advertisers have to go through them to reach us. It isn't clear to me though that this is the problem we actually want to solve. This leads me to believe that anti mon…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Monopolies are predominantly, in anti-trust law, judged by market (pricing) power, not raw market percentage. In theory sure. In practice, explain the Whole Foods/Wild Oats case, in which Trader Joe's/Albertson's/etc could start carrying the goods overnight. >This directly relates to whether there is effective competition in the market—which may be slightly different than your question of whether buyers can switch t…
My point is that there can be "effective competition" even if there are zero competitors at the moment; what matters is whether someone could come online and compete away the excessive profits The whole point of the network effect, is that there can be more than zero competitors who even have a superior product, and it really doesn't matter.
In fact, you can have "competition" while having all the substance of the monopoly. For example, if there are eight competitors with equal marketshare, but it's impossible for anyone new to enter the market, those eight can easily conspire to charge monopoly profits, despite each one's "small" market share.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
My point is that there can be "effective competition" even if there are zero competitors at the moment; what matters is whether someone could come online and compete away the excessive profits The whole point of the network effect, is that there can be more than zero competitors who even have a superior product, and it really doesn't matter.
But that's my point: it's the network effect (or related lock-in) that determines the monopoly, not the raw marketshare. In fact, you can have "competition" while having all the substance of the monopoly. For example, if there are eight competitors with equal marketshare, but it's impossible for anyone new to enter the market, those eight can easily conspire to charge monopoly profits, despite each one's "small" mark…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the interesting thing is that the users aren't the customers in these examples. Anti trust law would be concerned with the advertisers and fb/google. Not the users. I suppose you could make the argument that fb/google are monopolies because the advertisers have to go through them to reach us. It isn't clear to me though that this is the problem we actually want to solve. This leads me to believe that anti mon…
You mean, fb/google have monopolistic power over the advertisers and since advertisers are generally not our friends, then go for it, let them pay up?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> a monopoly should be judged by lock-in, not by raw market percentage Monopolies are predominantly, in anti-trust law, judged by market (pricing) power, not raw market percentage. This directly relates to whether there is effective competition in the market—which may be slightly different than your question of whether buyers can switch to an alternative; it is more whether the alternative(s) are empirically substitu…
I think the interesting thing is that the users aren't the customers in these examples. Anti trust law would be concerned with the advertisers and fb/google. Not the users. I suppose you could make the argument that fb/google are monopolies because the advertisers have to go through them to reach us. It isn't clear to me though that this is the problem we actually want to solve. This leads me to believe that anti mon…
There is an exchange for value between Google (FB, etc.) and consumers; the fact that it's an in-kind exchange rather than money doesn't prevent anti-trust analysis from being applied.
There's also the possibility of monopoly in some advertising segment, sure.