To be fair, and I don't agree with this, the word monopoly appears in the complaint 66 times. The NYT is reporting the story, but the FTC is the one "misusing" the word.
I'm just trying to help out here. I don't disagree with you, but it gets tiring that every single time some market position is abused, and the word "monopoly" gets used, there is at least one pedantic getting hung up on the "mono" part.
Android/iOS market share? Duopoly really. Call it a monopoly? "How is it a monopoly when..."
What they mean. What is always meant, is, you have a market position so significant, that you can use to get an unfair advantage on competition. That's what this is about, that is what all of these usually are about.
But, it gets sidetracked by misuse of words that should be understood from context.
Antitrust, isn't exclusively about monopolies abusing their market position. It doesn't care that much about whether it is one actor abusing it's position, or if it's two... Or three.
But this new paradigm of antitrust isn’t about if there’s one two or three of something. It’s a more complex form of antitrust.
The Amazon antitrust paradox is about how they aren’t a market leader in tons of their product categories but that they can cross leverage advantages between product categories and verticals to create anticompetitiveness. It’s an analysis of the internal structure of the business, not if they have competition in a narrow subset of outcomes.
Monopoly is being used as a substitute for the words bad actor or predatory not duopoly etc. IMHO it’s sloppiness and jargon to invoke emotion, and I’d prefer they used more precise words.
I am saying the word monopoly IS being misused, but I am not arguing that it is because its actually a duopoly, but it is being used as a substitute word in places better words belong.
I do not disagree at all with that. In fact, I also think I said, or implied at the least, that it was used incorrectly. However, for the sake of discussing the articles, every time this comes up, it would be more productive if people still understood that it isn't the monopoly part that is important, but the antitrust. Similar to what you were saying.
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.vaed.53...