It's not necessarily illegal to be a monopoly, it's illegal to behave in certain anti-competitive ways. For example:
- Rockefeller made deals with the railroads that shipped Standard Oil to charge higher prices to other prospective oil shippers.
- Rockefeller bought any competitor that was undercutting him and raised its prices so it stopped being a threat.
- "Competing" firms met and drew up an agreement that neither would undercut the other on price.
- "Competing" firms met and drew up an agreement that certain regions belonged to Firm A, while other regions belonged to Firm B, and they would not enter each other's territory.
- Microsoft sabotaged its user experience for users who removed Internet Explorer to dissuade them from using Netscape.
- Microsoft sabotaged its APIs with the deliberate intention of breaking Netscape, Java, etc.
It's illegal to use your market power to beat competitors in ways that aren't: produce a better/cheaper product that people choose because it's better/cheaper.
- Google bought out it's only competitor to Google Wallet at the time (Softcard) and shut it down.
- Google just announced that it'll block competitors' ads on it's web browser by default. And charge people who use other ad blockers money.
- Google has a secret agreement with every mobile device manufacturer not named Apple to use their product on their terms, and seek their permission for all device releases. And set Google's already dominant software as default on every device.
(EDIT @closeparen, yes, market forces are part of the monopoly Google has constructed. It's impossible to succeed in building a non-Google OS phone. That's the point. Google doesn't have to prohibit them from doing anything they know the licensees can't succeed at doing.
As Androids are woefully insecure, all consumers are hurt by Google's monopoly. Android is an example of an inferior product succeeding through monopoly control.)
- Trying to own the mobile wallet space is mildly interesting, but only mildly, since there are so many offerings now.
- Do you have reason to believe that Android licensing stifles competition or hurts the consumer in any way? We see Android licensees put out phones with other OSes, though they're not popular and quickly die off. We see carriers that carry Android phones carry others.
- Getting dominance over the browser space and then using it to reinforce its dominance in advertising is probably a compelling antitrust case, and frankly I have no idea how their lawyers didn't tell them so.
It isn't just a company trying to abuse market advantage as tool to exploit consumers and crowd out the sector - it is if they are successful at it.
I don't feel locked in to Google Wallet. That is changing, since there are only three "blessed" mobile payment systems now in Samsung, Android, and Apple Pay (rather than what we should have, a standard mobile payment API handled by ISO). But before, Paypal and Amazon Checkout both provided payment solutions that were rivals, with significant market shares, to Google Wallet.
The ad blocking in Chrome is obviously anti-competitive, but it waits to be seen if Google has actual monopolistic power in the browser space where this change doesn't drive consumers to competitors. If the advertisers Google is trying to bully fight back by having their affiliates block Chrome, either those businesses die or Chrome loses market share. We will have to see what happens, but I generally think if consumers want to use a web product, they would get another browser to do so and stop using Chrome in the same way we got 40% of people to drop IE for Firefox.
And finally, Google also doesn't have any agreements with Amazon. That is why you have to manually download their app store APK, and why it doesn't have first class installation support as a generic app like the Play Store. But Amazon is also making their own Android devices without Gapps, and Samsung is in a position to at least try it themselves if they wanted to, since they have their own app suite as well. And all Google does is require that all their apps be installed if a manufacturer wants to include any of them - which while heavy handed isn't anticompetitive to do.
If anything, a real domain of monopoly exploit by Google is how they will punish companies they disagree with in SEO, when they do have an overwhelming majority of the search market, and it has been proven in the last 2 decades of business that consumers treat Google like gospel - if its not there, it might as well not exist. People don't try using alternative search engines if they don't find what they are looking for on Google.
> Android is an example of an inferior product succeeding through monopoly control.
Android is first mover advantage. It has the same vicious feedback loop that gives Google, Facebook, Amazon, etc their monopolies - they act as middle men to third party products and services, and by capturing the audience capture the mindshare of retailers. It doesn't matter if its user and app developers, users and websites, users and friends of them, or users and actual goods retailers - each one has dominance in their market because they have the mindshare.
I don't see how Google is being particularly abusive with how they run Android. Nobody has to use their Play Store, and nobody has to develop against the Play Services thus bonding their app to the Google Suite. It is just consumers want the apps on that store, so developers use the services and ignore the competition and create a self fulfilling prophecy of monopoly.
And I'm not arguing Android doesn't have a monopoly - just Google isn't really exploiting it by only requiring all their apps come if someone wants the Play Store. The OS itself is liberally licensed, and anyone could either reuse Dalvik or write their own implementation to run APKs. I'm not sure how you would legislate to avoid the natural monopolies caused by things like the Play Store, Google Search, Facebook, or Amazon.
- Rockefeller made deals with the railroads that shipped Standard Oil to charge higher prices to other prospective oil shippers.
- Rockefeller bought any competitor that was undercutting him and raised its prices so it stopped being a threat.
- "Competing" firms met and drew up an agreement that neither would undercut the other on price.
- "Competing" firms met and drew up an agreement that certain regions belonged to Firm A, while other regions belonged to Firm B, and they would not enter each other's territory.
- Microsoft sabotaged its user experience for users who removed Internet Explorer to dissuade them from using Netscape.
- Microsoft sabotaged its APIs with the deliberate intention of breaking Netscape, Java, etc.
It's illegal to use your market power to beat competitors in ways that aren't: produce a better/cheaper product that people choose because it's better/cheaper.