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Originally Posted by Worldwalker
The US long ago ceased frowning on "combinations in restraint of trade". I have actually seen it said, by governmental individuals, that monopolies are a good thing because they give the companies involved more money, which will then allow them to "innovate".
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That may be because there is nothing inherently wrong with a monopoly.
E.g. Apple has a near-monopoly at the moment on digital music. This has not prevented Apple from innovating, nor rival services like Spotify or Pandora from growing.
The problem is with anti-competitive behavior, not "being big."
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Originally Posted by Worldwalker
innovation has rarely if ever come from big, established companies whose markets are secure; it's always been the province of small, struggling companies that need a means to compete other than existing market dominance.
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What, exactly, are you basing that on?
IBM was huge when they developed a viable personal computer; Nintendo is massive and developed the Wii and its innovative controllers; Microsoft is massive and came up with the Xbox and the Kinect; Google is huge and while they do acquire lots of things, also came up with Android, Chrome / Chrome OS, Google Books and others; Apple was sitting on over $20 billion in cash holdings whilst they developed the iPad (and now has close to $40bn in cash); and of course, Amazon is the 800lb gorilla of the online book biz and not only pushed ebooks into prominence, but also developed Whispernet along the way; large pharmaceuticals develop lots of new drugs, etc etc etc
Innovation often requires intense resources, which simply aren't always available to small companies. And a small company can be just as scared of innovation and disruptive technologies as a large one, since they can't all turn on a dime without confusing their existing customers.
Sounds to me more like you just have the typical "Big Is Bad" bias....