"Monopoly: the exclusive possession or control of the supply of or trade in a commodity or service."
Given that there are things such as Walmart.com, eBay, Shopify, and many hundreds of other online commerce stores, they are self-evidently not a monopoly. In fact, they don't even have a majority share of eCommerce in the US.
And they also don't have majority share in cloud services.
Nor do they have a monopoly in eBooks.
I did not say they don't have monopoly power, I said, they are not a monopoly.
(Other than obvious things such as "Amazon products"..., in which case every manufacturer or retailer is a monopoly in their own products.)
> Other than obvious things such as "Amazon products"..., in which case every manufacturer or retailer is a monopoly in their own products.
The way this argument is normally presented is somewhat intentionally obtuse. Obviously Nike has a monopoly on Nike shoes, but "Nike shoes" isn't any kind of sensible market definition because you go to a shoe store and there are a dozen brands of shoes that are all pretty fungible with each other.
But then you get into something like "GM-compatible brake pads" and that is a sensible market definition, because if you have a GM car and you need new brake pads, they need to be compatible with your car. But you'll also notice that this isn't the same thing as GM-brand brake pads. You could get GM-compatible brake pads from a variety of OEMs that are all compatible with your GM vehicle.
Or, it could be the case that only GM makes GM-compatible brake pads. In which case they would have a monopoly in that market. Not because it's a monopoly on their brand of brake pads, but because it's a monopoly on any brand of brake pads compatible with that brand of cars -- which is something else entirely.
Notice that they don't even have to be the same company. If you have a Studebaker, the Studebaker Corporation is no more, and you may have trouble finding parts. It may even be the case that some independent third party has a monopoly on some such parts, even though it's a monopoly on parts for one specific brand of car.
> Or, it could be the case that only GM makes GM-compatible brake pads. In which case they would have a monopoly in that market. Not because it’s a monopoly on their brand of brake pads, but because it’s a monopoly on any brand of brake pads compatible with that brand of cars – which is something else entirely.
> Notice that they don’t even have to be the same company.
As a specific example (and note, that you also don’t have to be the literal sole supplier to have a legal monopoly under US antitrust law), the market Microsoft was found to have monopolized in their big antitrust case was the market for operating systems for IBM-compatible personal computers.
Given that there are things such as Walmart.com, eBay, Shopify, and many hundreds of other online commerce stores, they are self-evidently not a monopoly. In fact, they don't even have a majority share of eCommerce in the US.
And they also don't have majority share in cloud services.
Nor do they have a monopoly in eBooks.
I did not say they don't have monopoly power, I said, they are not a monopoly.
(Other than obvious things such as "Amazon products"..., in which case every manufacturer or retailer is a monopoly in their own products.)