> Standard Oil you have more tangible view of what the monopoly looks like: the oil company owns the fields, the railroads, the refineries, the whole damn stack

> Standard Oil you have more tangible view of what the monopoly looks like: the oil company owns the fields, the railroads, the refineries, the whole damn stack. Standard oil is a great example but your describing vertical integration. Lets take an amazing example of vertical integration that you might experience often but take zero note of. YKK zippers: from the metal smelting for the finished product to the machines they are made ON YKK owns all of it! https://ykknorthamerica.com/the-ykk-difference/vertical-integration/ https://ykknorthamerica.com/the-ykk-difference/vertical-inte... Do other people make zippers? Sure! But use of YKK is costly and a statement of quality on the product around it. Google at this moment isn't any different. If you cut yourself off from google your cutting off lots of secondary companies that use their services (No maps, no uber, no Lyft as an example). Google looks a hell of a lot more like YKK today than standard oil.