Quote:
Originally Posted by Cinisajoy
As long as there is Google, Apple and Walmart, Amazon cannot in any sense of the word be a Monopoly.
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There are two main senses of the word:
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/monopoly
Quote:
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exclusive control of a commodity or service in a particular market, or a control that makes possible the manipulation of prices.
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In the first sense above, Amazon is not a monopoly. In the second, it is.
Quote:
Originally Posted by cfrizz
Whatever Amazon is, We The People are the ones that made them what they are. That is the freedom of a free market. If someone else comes out with a better option than Amazon, we would probably promptly switch over to them.
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As the apparent failure to date of the well-financed jet.com challenge shows, the cost of entry for a real Amazon competitor is enormous. It is tremendously more time-consuming, and harder, to build an amazon-like web site than many realize.
cfrizz, this isn't to argue that Amazon is a threat to freedom of expression. I just checked a bunch of presidential campaign books, and all were in stock and offered at what seemed either reasonable or set-by-publisher prices. This is in
contrast to the situation four years ago.
Right now, Amazon's book monopoly is not a freedom of expression problem in the Western world. But this has little to do with the wonders of the free market. Instead, it has to do with Amazon's currently doing a good job of stocking books from an extremely wide range of viewpoints.
The one place where I think they are doing a bad job in the freedom of expression arena may be
www.amazon.cn. However, Amazon does not have much market power in China.
Re the links in #1, pressure from these organizations is, IMHO, a big factor in making sure that, this election cycle, Amazon will treat all the campaign books equally. Even if some of the criticisms are over the top, their overall effect is good.