Quote:
Originally Posted by speakingtohe
Certainly competition is better. And I am not sure what you mean by focused. Are you saying Amazon are not focused?
Anyway bring on the whole lot of examples of monopolies that are independent businesses with a wide variety of products and interests (companies like Amazon that carry a multitude of products for example or even large conglomerates with diverse interests.) that have survived in the general marketplace long enough to destroy all competition or even 50% of it.
When management gets complacent or distracted, then generally the business itself suffers not, as you seem to imply (probably I am misunderstanding you) in a better position to be monopolistic and gouge consumers.
Only way I see it that your fears will realize is if Amazon buys all of the publishing companies, and all of the authors, and all of the diaper manufacturers of all of the goods that they sell. Could happen of course, but seems unlikely. And of course there may be many other ways this can happen that I am unaware of.
Looking forward to the list of very many times you have as I am sure I will learn a lot.
Thanks
helen
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You seem to be in a rush to put words in my mouth. For the most part, monopolies don't last, barring government enforcement of the monopoly. Other companies see the opportunity and move into the space. For example, Microsoft's Internet Explorer (the one that triggered the Anti-Trust lawsuit against Microsoft in 1998 that eventually got overturned on appeal when the judge was found to have bias in the case. hum, sounds kind of familiar) has dropped in usage all the way down to 19% of the market. It didn't happen over night and the original competition (Netscape) dropped by the wayside, but Microsoft got complacent and new competition came into the arena.
IMPO, Amazon is ripe for competition in the ebook arena. The only real barrier of entry is getting the contracts to sale the various ebooks and DRM. If the publishers ever drop the DRM, then I suspect we will see a number of companies who offer books in various formats.