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Merely being better than the competition is not the traditional (outdated) definition of monopoly.