3 ms·
The monopolist, for some time, may "do better" than in a competitive market. But unless they continue to act as if they're competing, they will stagnate. Reme
by warrenm 9y ago
The monopolist, for some time, may "do better" than in a competitive market.
But unless they continue to act as if they're competing, they will stagnate.
Remeber AltaVista? The amazing search engine from DEC? No? Why? Because Google.
Just in the search space, there are many "better" search engines - which is why Google, to continue with this exemplar, is NOT a search engine company .. they are an advertising company which happens to have a good search engine, decent mobile OS, good enough map apps (they do own Waze, after all), great social network, etc
The advantage of the ecosystem Google has is they can be "good enough" in several areas that have far better individual options: but DuckDuckGo, for example, doesn't have a web-based office suite. Or a mobile OS. Or a maps service. Or a browser. Or. Or. Or. Or.
It is the ecosystem that ties people in. (No doubt, Apple, Microsoft, and others have various takes on the whole ecosystem thing, too - I'm just sticking with Google because it's who you singled-out.)
I rarely hit "google" when I "google" - I find results off DDG, Bing, and Qwant are "better" (and have each as the default search provider in different browsers).
What, inherently, makes you think Google (or any other company) would (or does) "do good"? Companies exist for one purpose - maximizing shareholder value. So long as they don't run [too] afoul of the law, they'll operate in more-or-less whatever manner they can, by-and-large, that accomplishes that end goal.
And who gets to decide your mythic "reasonable profit"? You? Me? "The government"? Some other external organization? Is it 10% net profit? 30%? 50%? 80%? 255%? How is that number decided upon? Why is it that value and not some other value? What happens if "reasonable profit" is defined as 30%, but they happen to make a profit of 40% this quarter/year/etc? Who gets to decide where that "unreasonable" percentage goes?
And sure, you might happen to get a "BDFL" in charge of the company ... today. What about tomorrow? It's the age-old problem with absolute (or near-absolute) monarchies / dictatorships /etc: you might get a Marcus Aurelius. But you get Nero, too.