[JanezStupar]

:)

Amazon is waaaay from monopoly. It competes with eBay, specialty web stores,...

And also - entering the field of WEB commerce is not a hard to get into market per say. Getting into oil market or telco marker, even getting Wal-Mart out of the way - now these are some hard undertakings.

In a town with 1 fruit shop - you can always go to nearby town if you don't like your fruit merchant (out of spite for example). But when you arrive to these nearby towns - and everywhere there is basically the same fruit retailer, with the same problem that bothered you with the first one. That's when you encountered a true monopoly.

I'm from ex-socialist republic and mostly everything was monopolized (many things still are) by the government or government owned enterprises. If you're from US, you wouldn't have seen stuff like that since AFAIK you guys are really good at breaking stuff like that apart.

So while I admit that your reasoning is solid, I view the term "monopoly" as inherently bad, since lets face it most (even all?) businesses start squeezing their customers when they get the chance.

[meric]

Seriously, drive 100km to the next town to buy fruit when you have a reasonably priced fruit shop next door? :)

I'm from Australia, similar i suppose. Monopolies are generally bad, but as I said before, monopolies that result because a firm is super efficient and keeps prices low, and remains that way because it is afraid of potential competitors, well that monopoly is hard-earned. Although these so called monopolies are generally small. (being the only firm in a niche market).