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by seaman1921 1663 days ago
> Who's worried about IBM or Intel nowadays? Anyone using myspace or vine?

This statement would be relevant here if these companies hadn't been replaced by even bigger monopolies. So if facebook and apple is replaced by something even bigger, the folks who are afraid of monopolies would have more to worry about.
1 comments
ahdh8f4hf4h8 1663 days ago
IBM was a much bigger and more domineering monopoly at it's peak - there was a time where you effectively could not have computers or a datacenter without paying IBM money, directly or indirectly. I wouldn't qualify most of the FAANGs as monopolies (at least not yet) - reasonable substitutes exists for all of them.

The modern market does favor a handful of large players for each market - this is true in almost all sectors though. This not a monopoly though; as long as the top players change over time it is still a working market.

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skinnymuch 1663 days ago
To be a monopoly, your industry has to matter a lot. Except for part of the 90s, IBM’s dominance wasn’t that important relative to the world. Even with big tech not as monopolistic as IBM, I think they are far more influential now. Even individually.
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samhw 1662 days ago
> To be a monopoly, your industry has to matter a lot.

This is not a part of anyone's definition of 'monopoly', ever. Monopoly means dominance in a particular market - nothing more, nothing less: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly

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skinnymuch 1659 days ago
Some admittedly silly examples of monopolies that fit the definition you’re saying. I know some one on HN before posted a much better example. I can’t recall it now.

Foursquare’s Swarm has a monopoly on social network checking in to places with optional photos + logged notes.

Tiago Forte has dominance in courses/in depth, varied content on building a second brain.

Readwise.io has dominance in spaced repetition learning from synced data.

There’s only one or two sites/communities for my personality disorder that doesn’t get much attention. They dominate the market.

There’s only one app that has you put up money for habits/challenges you complete via video selfies. Spar App (side note: horrible ownership/stewards of the app)

There was previously one community forum for video game site owners.

[almost] all of these have [near] 100% of their market. I don’t believe people would consider any of them monopolies.

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