[youngButEager]

No it's actually true, and everyone knew from the context I meant commerce monopolies in capitalist economies, such as Microsoft, IBM (in the early days of computers you apparently could get fired for writing a P.O. for a non-IBM machine), etc. Not talking about utilities. I meant commerce monopolies in a competitive market place, a monopoly that develops with 'network effects', 'switching costs', etc.

Here's all it takes for a monopoly to fail:

(switching costs become low enough) + (current monopoly has become a pain/overpriced/etc.) = get thee down satan and the monopoly is gone.

Friendster, Myspace lost their market as we all know. SO WILL FACEBOOK. There is no 'secret sauce' there, just network effects, and minor switching costs of transferring/losing the data you've put on your FB account.

Switching costs for desktop operating systems are dropping incrementally for obvious reasons.

Lloyds of London has been around a long time but that doesn't mean they're a monopoly.