[jad]

> To play devil's advocate, how much innovation is needed for toothpaste?

Having the market structured such that innovation is rewarded might not be important in toothpaste, but it's really important in technology. Commoditization can kill innovation in a technology market, which is exactly what happened with PCs once Windows reached monopoly market share.

[davidw]

Monopolies != commodities.

I suppose there are corner cases where they could be, but they're two rather different things.

[jad]

Right. I was saying that in the PC industry, it was the Windows monopoly that commoditized PC hardware. I wasn't saying that every monopoly necessarily leads to commoditization.