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That’s not a useful distinction. Market monopolies, if they exist, where they exist, are usually tied into those same government granted monopolies. Facebook th
by SllX 5y ago
That’s not a useful distinction. Market monopolies, if they exist, where they exist, are usually tied into those same government granted monopolies. Facebook the bare bones public domain Technology stack is a lot less valuable to investors than Facebook the service on the Facebook servers presented to Facebook account holders on Facebook’s private servers at Facebook.com paid for with Ad revenue generated by Facebook’s copyrighted (and maybe partially patented?) adtech and backed by Sales Reps on Facebook’s payroll.
And despite all of that, they’re probably still not a monopoly for anything (haven’t heard a convincing argument on this one yet!), at least anywhere the DoJ and FTC have jurisdiction.
- wolverine876 5y agoFacebook's extraordinary market power seems due to the network effect, not patents.
- SllX 5y agoNot just patents: trademark too. There’s only one Facebook. Without that, you also don’t have Facebook’s network effect tying it all together.
- wolverine876 5y agoI very much doubt that if someone could setup another service named Facebook, they could compete with them or do much beyond annoy customers and phish.
- SllX 5y agoLet’s not get into hypotheticals. You know as well as I do that a large bit of Facebook’s early growth story was their brand and their reputation. That name may have been dragged through the mud in the past few years, but it still means something, and its not without value despite the recent rebranding on the parent company front. Meta retains the exclusive right to do business using the Facebook mark and they’ll continue to enforce it. It’s the same story for any other company, and it’s a form of monopoly that the government grants, not something that would be enforceable otherwise.