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by chii 5019 days ago
you can't call android a monopoly. thats like saying server is monopolized by GNU/linux.
1 comments

You make it sound as if there's any doubt that Google will continue to control Android for the foreseeable future. There is none.
What about Amazon's Kindle Fire?
Amazon is not going to wrest control of Android away from Google.
I think danmaz was trying to say that Android's monopoly does not mean anything because its ecosystem is so thoroughly fragmented. It does not seem to be getting any better either, when you have major content providers like Amazon forking it to distribute their own content.
An Android monopoly certainly means something. I guess time will tell whether what it turns out to mean is significantly less onerous than other monopolies.
A monopoly means only as much as the amount of control its owner has over it. In the case of Android, most of the power seems to be concentrated amongst the carriers, since they get to decide what versions of the OS will be available on the devices they sell and what UIs/crapware they will be bundled with. With the resulting fragmentation (which is massive), the effectiveness of the monopoly is significantly diminished.