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Oh, please. This piece is silly. Amazon's ebook "monopoly" is incredibly fragile. Either Apple or Google could squash it without breaking a sweat. Microsoft, Fa
by fpgeek 12y ago
Oh, please. This piece is silly. Amazon's ebook "monopoly" is incredibly fragile. Either Apple or Google could squash it without breaking a sweat. Microsoft, Facebook and others could too, they'd just probably sweat a bit.
None of them want to. That's not an accident. It's because Amazon isn't giving them an opening by abusing either customers or suppliers. Publishers can claim otherwise, but they're not putting their money where their mouths are. They're not walking away from Amazon, nor can they even demonstrate that they're getting clearly better terms from anyone else.
- jackgavigan 12y agoThe problem isn't that a company has a monopoly per se, assuming that the monopoly was achieved by outperforming its competitors fairly and legally. The problem arises when a company abuses its monopoly position or, far more commonly, when an oligopoly engages in implicit collusion. As a general rule, such situations result in the suppression of competition, which leads to higher prices and a poorer product/service for the consumer.