Regardless of your feelings, various countries have thought it a good idea to set up antitrust law and competition laws for just such situations (see [1], [2]).

Regardless of your feelings, various countries have thought it a good idea to set up antitrust law and competition laws for just such situations (see [1], [2]). The logic is that with a large enough market share, a company can keep perpetually dominating the market purely based on status quo, to the detriment of consumers. Related is anti-competitive practices, e.g. where a company might strong-arm "partners" into dropping competitors, or otherwise coercing them into a highly unfair situation for the competitor. This is particularly applicable to companies which try to use their monopoly in one area to leverage a huge advantage in another area (e.g. the famous case of Microsoft using their OS advantage to gain advantage in the browser space - again, you may have different feelings about the issue). So basically, what we're talking about is a situation where a company is effectively and practically un-challengable primarily due to its current market share, and many countries recognizing this as a problem, and having laws against this type of thing. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_antitrust_law http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_antitrust_law [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Competition_law http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Competition_law