3 ms·

They are mainly regulated because they naturally form into monopolies, just like the large internet services.

• dec0dedab0de 10y ago
  Large internet services do not form natural monopoplies. Amazon has New egg, ebay, walmart, plus a million new ones trying to overthrow them. The local cable company only has the local Phone company.
  • Certhas 10y ago
    For Amazon this might just about be true, however, there are strong platform effects. Amazon is growing faster than the market. There is a fairly obvious argument to make for why its a natural monopoly: If its the first place buyers go to look for stuff, it's the first place sellers go for stuff. If it's the place where all the sellers are, it's the place buyers go to look first. Really, given that this is a market that is growing double digits by year, the amount by which amazon dominates it is shocking. And that is in a market that is still growing rapidly. For Facebook/Whatsapp this is even more obviously not true. Facebook even failed to leverage its social network monopoly to establish its messenger against insurgents, simply because they were a bit late.