3 ms·

Not disputing the hard work, but at key points in Microsoft's history, they've held and exercised tremendous monopoly power, generating large margin at the expe

• crdb 11y ago
  Right, but the difference is that their monopoly was in a created market, vs Slim's which is the definition of a bad monopoly (sole supplier of a utility). Their margin was the reward for the creation of something new, not taking a cut on a natural resource. But I agree that it's not black and white - companies lie all over the spectrum (you could argue that Slim is getting paid for the effort of putting out a telecom network in Mexico). A clearer example is Google: it has an effective monopoly on search, but it's not because it has lobbied Washington to stop people from using other search results, it's because it was the best search engine, spread like wildfire, and kept the market ever since. People use Google not because there's no other (legal) search provider available, but because it's still the best way to find things on the internet. Because of this instinctive understanding of the value created, it's much rarer to see Brin and Page criticized for their wealth.