It doesn’t do anyone any good to call any of these firms “monopolies.” It’s not accurate, not for any of them.
Nor was monopoly the issue in the Microsoft case (that was about bundling).
There may be reasons to look at antitrust law and to change it with some of these firms and their behaviors in mind but “vertical monopoly” isn’t an accurate characterization of any of them.
> At trial, the district court ruled that Microsoft's actions constituted unlawful monopolization under Section 2 of the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit affirmed most of the district court's judgments.
> I teach antitrust to grads and undergrads.
Consider updating the curriculum? My understanding is that the bundling was actionable because they were considered a monopoly.
I'm not sure whether by "bundling" you are referring to Microsoft bundling IE with Windows, but if so, that was actually one of the findings that was specifically vacated by the appeals court:
These arguments all point to one conclusion: we cannot comfortably say that bundling in platform software markets has so little "redeeming virtue," N. Pac. Ry., 356 U.S. at 5, 78 S.Ct. 514, and that there would be so "very little loss to society" from its ban, that "an inquiry into its costs in the individual case [can be] considered [] unnecessary." Jefferson Parish, 466 U.S. at 33-34, 104 S.Ct. 1551 (O'Connor, J., concurring). We do not have enough empirical evidence regarding the effect of Microsoft's practice on the amount of consumer surplus created or consumer choice foreclosed by the integration of added functionality into platform software to exercise sensible judgment regarding that entire class of behavior. (For some issues we have no data.) "We need to know more than we do about the actual impact of these arrangements on competition to decide whether they ... should be classified as per se violations of the Sherman Act." White Motor, 372 U.S. at 263, 83 S.Ct. 696. Until then, we will heed the wisdom that "easy labels do not always supply ready answers," Broad. Music, 441 U.S. at 8, 99 S.Ct. 1551, and vacate the District Court's finding of per se tying liability under Sherman Act § 1. We remand the case for evaluation of Microsoft's tying arrangements under the rule of reason.
Monopoly is a red herring term that inadequately covers the space of abuse of market power. It’s easy for abusers to argue they’re not monopolies as a means of dodging the important bit. Hell you have plenty of people eager to do it for them. See comments on this very article on HN.
I agree. I dislike calling them "monopolies". If we use inappropriate
language it's easier for opponents to undermine fair arguments.
But how do we deal with this much power ?
The bill "will facilitate innovation and consumer choice by ensuring
that big tech companies cannot give preference to their own products
and services over the rich diversity of competitive options
offered..."
Sure that's one way of seeing a small part of the problem. But it
misses so much.
A fair digital market is one thing. A viable technological society
that isn't a cloaked form of fascism is another. More than "consumer
choice", it's about the RIGHT to have choice - subtle difference but
bear with me please.
If I exercise my moral prerogative to say "I will not use any
Microsoft products because I believe they are a morally repugnant
company" I may currently lose a job. Not because Microsoft are a
"monopoly" but because my employer limits my choice. Or I may not get
medical treatment because my local healthcare provider only gives
access through a Microsoft portal. The problem subsists outside the
scope of Microsoft (or Google or whomever) qua monopoly.
Where I think the European Digital Markets Act gets thing a bit more
right is it's crafted within the European Interoperability Framework
(an older and maybe more ambitious project).
The object isn't to weaken concentrated dominance or self-preference,
but to guarantee the user has a choice including the choice NOT TO USE
a technology in the case there seems to be "only one choice". An
employer, health provider, payments processor or local government
would have to provide alternatives or opt-outs without
prejudice. That would allow genuine alternative service providers (not
necessarily commercial) a foot in the door. It's a different approach
that starts bottom-up instead of top-down.
Maybe the words as used in court don't reflect the generally understood meaning well.
Controlling and overcharging use of (one of the few) roads to the market, even in the case there are other roads farther away, and you can build your own road at an incredibly unfeasible cost, is what most people understand as a monopoly situation.
Arguably this is what Apple and Google are doing when they charge exorbitant fees from developers targeting their platform.
When a company can loose money on a competiting company just to drive the competing company out of business; I call that a monopoly.
No not monopolies like we had like the Bell telephone, but we have 2-3 huge companies that collude and stifle competition.
Proving collusion is hard these days though. Too many fresh faced MBA's who are atheists.
(I'm a Watch Repairer. I can't buy parts from The Swatch Group, or Reichmont. Why do we even have The Sherman Anti-trust Act if it's never used? I'm not saying dissolve these obvious conglomerations, but let's not encourage them. Why was ATT and T-Mobile allowed to combine. To tired to go on, but tired of ogliopolyssssss.
When it's done to force competitors out of a market it's called predatory pricing [1], and it is not a legitimate business tactic. It is illegal in many jurisdictions, and generally considered unethical even where it's not specifically outlawed. It is also considered a strategy to achieve a monopoly or near-monopoly pricing.
That's incorrect, and accusing people of not having read something is against the site guidelines.
Predatory pricing just needs to be done from a dominant market position, which is absolutely a label that applies to the giant tech firms being discussed. You only need to be in a market position strong enough to wield the pressure needed to force competitors out of market. You absolutely do not need to be effectively a monopoly.
> Proving collusion is hard these days though. Too many fresh faced MBA's who are atheists.
What does a person's religious beliefs have to do with hiding collusion? That's a helluva straw man to pull into the conversation, and it completely derails your first point.
I was nodding during your first paragraph, then did a double take to make sure I read the second right.
AT&T and T-Mobile did not combine, that purchase was (one of the few mergers) blocked by the DOJ under the Obama administration.
T-Mobile did later (2020) buy Sprint, but it was in a far worse position economically than T-Mobile was in 2011 at the time of the attempted AT&T purchase.
> When a company can loose money on a competiting company just to drive the competing company out of business; I call that a monopoly.
But this may happen even on a highly competitive market, if one company is a large established one (say, controlling 10% of the market), and the other is a small startup. Just make the key differentiating feature which the new competitor is bringing free in your established product for some time. Implement it first, if needed.
It happens all the time in the laundromat business - if you try to open one near an existing one you better be ready to withstand months or years of “25 cent loads” and other such fun things.
ah, there it is, the ol' "i'm an expert" ploy that we were just talking about elsewhere, and then redirecting to a semantic non sequitur to divert attention away from the core issue of unfair markets. note that you can talk about the nuance of the subject without misdirecting it this way.
(the term 'monopoly' is being taken too literally here, thinking that that's cleverness, when it really indicates a positional weakness because of the revealed impulse to divert)
It doesn’t do anyone any good to call any of these firms “monopolies.” It’s not accurate, not for any of them.
Nor was monopoly the issue in the Microsoft case (that was about bundling).
There may be reasons to look at antitrust law and to change it with some of these firms and their behaviors in mind but “vertical monopoly” isn’t an accurate characterization of any of them.