Being a monopoly isn’t the issue. Abusing monopoly power is. Commentators often miss that both is required for antitrust action. In what market does Amazon hav

Being a monopoly isn’t the issue. Abusing monopoly power is. Commentators often miss that both is required for antitrust action. In what market does Amazon have a defacto monopoly in? Apple is another one often brought up for antitrust related to App Store policing. In the late 90s, early 00s, Microsoft sold 90+% of desktop operating systems (their monopoly). That’s fine, great success! However, they used that monopoly to harm competitors: bundling a competing product with their earned monopoly (IE/Netscape), threatening vendors which attempted to also sell a competitor’s product (Sony/BeOS), locking in customers by extending common platforms and making them incompatible with competitor’s products (Java). Had they not had a monopoly, those actions probably wouldn’t be considered abuse. It’s the combination that’s the problem.