[colllectorof]

>The reason why anti-trust is based on precise economic definitions is that it leaves as little room as possible for the government to favor friendly players. When you need to prove harm to consumers, the bar is high, as it should be.

Yeah, I'm sure that allowing companies to merge right until the point where they make consumer's lives a living hell is great for the society and the economy.

>The classic example is: Coca-Cola has a 95% market share of the cola market in some countries. Does it mean it has a monopoly? No.

There is no such thing as "cola market". There are soft-drinks, and there are tons of them in every store. (Although, most people don't realize how many of those brands are owned by Coke or Pepsi, and what kind of shit they're doing to buy out and suppress the competition.)

But more importantly, soft drinks don't control any aspect of people's lives. Google, Facebook, and Amazon control not only what you can do as a consumer, but also how smaller companies can interact with you and how those companies run their businesses.

Here is a fun mental exercise for the reader. Imagine that you run Alphabet and want to destroy an arbitrary medium-size business that threatens you in any way. How hard would it be, considering you control pretty much all the search queries on the web and tons of other things?

[bilbo0s]

>Google, Facebook, and Amazon control not only what you can do as a consumer...

???

I'm not sure this is true?

I don't feel like they are controlling me when I go to Target or Walmart??? But I'm not sure if there is something maybe with the advertising that is making me go to Target and Walmart? Either way, it's totally up to me as a consumer where I spend my money I would think.

[beagle3]

More and more websites I need (including government and pseudo government websites, e.g. parking ticket payment that was outsourced) use Recaptcha. As a result, my government forces me to provide Google with free labour for basic functions, and additionally, it is possible for Google -- if they don't like me -- to declare me a robot and stop me from using those websites.

And .. what do you know? Google really doesn't like my tight uBlock Origin / Chameleon / Firefox Container / uMatrix / Privacy Badger setup, and every time I need to prove I'm not a robot (by providing free labour) I get longer and longer sequences.

Similarly, Facebook (through their WhatsApp acquisition) now decides who I get to talk to, because they have a monopoly on messaging where I live.

[Vinnl]

I think I'm on the "clear definition of monopoly" side, but in this specific example: if Amazon is able to make specific companies go bankrupt, that product will no longer be available to you any more even if you go to Target or Walmart.

[colllectorof]

Not sure what Target or Walmart have to do with what I said.

Amazon doesn't control where you buy random stuff, but they have disproportionate influence in some areas, like books. I'm pretty sure they are already in the position to make or break some brands simply by banning or promoting them.

[threatofrain]

He's talking about his freedom as a consumer to shop at competitors to Amazon, Google, etc. People probably don't feel the same way about AT&T.

Consumers prefer Google and Amazon, and it would cost them little to switch. Most consumers have no choice but to accept AT&T or Comcast.

[soundwave106]

You don't have to be a total 100% monopoly market to be successfully accused of anti-competitive behavior, however.

When Microsoft was ruled to have violated antitrust laws in the early 2000s, there were alternatives available for browsers (eg Netscape) and operating systems (eg Linux and Mac OS). However, in the US court's opinion, Microsoft made it too difficult to install competing browsers on Windows. I believe that the courts also frowned at Microsoft forcing OEMs to refrain from offering competing OS products. Thus it was found guilty of antitrust behavior, and was forced to settle with the US government.

(Thus IMHO the original article seems to oversimplify things. In the Microsoft case which is well after the "Chicago school" influence was around, low consumer prices were not really the driving factor in the lawsuits. Also, the "Chicago school" may not be a single monolith opinion. One of the first articles I found on a Google search for current Chicago school antitrust feeling was a Bloomberg article about this paper -- https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3129221 -- which is about the negative effect of corporate monopsony on the labor market... so...)

[bilbo0s]

>You don't have to be a total 100% monopoly market to be successfully accused of anti-competitive behavior...

But you do have to have done something that is anti-competitive in some market. (Not only that, but you have to have a competitive advantage in the market in which you take the anti-competitive action.)

[leereeves]

There are alternatives to AT&T or Comcast; you could dismiss concerns by saying consumers prefer their service over wireless or satellite Internet.

[paulryanrogers]

The price and quality of service are very different with satellite or wireless. Compared to cable the alternatives are slower, higher latency, less reliable, and more expensive.

[leereeves]

And the quality of service is also much lower on Amazon and Facebook competitors, and while I prefer DuckDuckGo, it's not as good as Google either (yet) on any criteria other than privacy.

Merely being better than the competition is not the traditional (outdated) definition of monopoly.

[knlinux]

> Here is a fun mental exercise for the reader. Imagine that you run Alphabet and want to destroy an arbitrary medium-size business that threatens you in any way. How hard would it be, considering you control pretty much all the search queries on the web and tons of other things?

Probably very easy, but consistently using this strategy would ruin my own business, in effect helping my competition. Now imagine you're Facebook, how easy it was to rule the social media world, and because of series of equally stupid hard-balls you've mentioned, you're 5 years away from being MySpace.