Has the internet leads to natural monopolies and will it be different for ebooks?

[Penforhire]

I would have said exatly the opposite of the OP's speculation, the internet reduces barriers to entry. Some competitors have been listed but there are more.

[ApK]

I will say, though, that while eBay's 'monopoly' on auctions is really what makes it good...sellers can find that one buyer for any obscure item, and buyers are apt to find anything they want there...it is true that eBay does seems to exhibit some of those negative monopolistic tendencies. I'm thinking of stuff like forcing use of Paypal so they get fees on both ends, etc.

[ApK]

Originally Posted by Catlady

Skype was the first thing I removed from my new computer--no thank you!

I used to do that to, but Skype actually won me over. Now that we have practical handheld video chatting devices, it works, and it's easier to get other people to use Skype than Google video chat for some reason.
I hope MS doesn't screw it up.

[StoryEnthusiast]

I think the Internet is a level playing field. Anyone with a good idea has an good chance of success, and we, the users, are the one to benefit. For example, now I can learn so much from watching long Youtube video instead of having to spend much money attending expensive seminars and conferences.

[Catlady]

Originally Posted by ApK

I used to do that to, but Skype actually won me over. Now that we have practical handheld video chatting devices, it works, and it's easier to get other people to use Skype than Google video chat for some reason.
I hope MS doesn't screw it up.

I don't want to see and be seen when I'm making a phone call.

[cfrizz]

I think it's impossible to have a monopoly on the internet. The internet is ALL about choice. Yes you have some big players...for now, but that certainly isn't a guarantee that they will remain so.

Before FB came along the big player was My Space, now you don't hear anything about them.

I do a lot of purchasing from Amazon, but they certainly aren't the only place I get things from.

I don't have a Kindle, so needless to say I have never bought an ebook from them, I don't need to I have plenty of other places to get my books from.

The web is constantly changing with new players stepping up to the plate. I don't really care about any of them, I just care about finding what I want at a price I'm willing to pay. I don't really care about the name attached to the website I bought it at. I have a life and have much better things to do with my time besides obsess about things like this.

[SteveEisenberg]

I agree with OP idea.

Of course, we rarely see a 100% monopoly, but it does seem common for one firm to have most of the market.

Originally Posted by Barcey

Novell
WordStar
WordPerfect
Visicalc
Lotus 123
Ashton Tate (dBase)
Myspace
etc...

The only internet example here is Myspace, and I don't have the knowledge to comment there.

The rest are software, which, come to think of it, is also monopoly-prone.

A Visicalc near-monopoly was replaced by a Lotus 123 near monopoly, and same with WordStar being replaced by Word Perfect. Most of the rest are not examples of the monopoly being lost, but of the market share for the product collapsing. What happenned with productivity software is that people stopped buying best-of-breed stand-alone products and started buying office suites. And even though the companies that make Lotus 123 and Word Perfect have suites, they have not been successful in that market.

Its not so much that Access replaced dBase as that people stopped buying stand-alone database -- except in the large-scale enterprise market where dBase was never a name anyway.

The only way anyone can compete with Microsoft Office is to give their suite away. Now, that's monopoly power.

Originally Posted by Ekaros

Scaling in small scale is quite easy and barriers of entering to market are low.

You may be underestimating economies of scale.

To provide a web experience similar to that of Amazon, you theoretically have to write almost as many lines of code as Amazon has for its web site, despite having a tiny proportion of the market. This isn't quite true, but the number of lines of code you need to write to provide an Amazon-quality experience is enormous. Plus, Amazon has warehouses in the hinterlands of most major US cities, greatly reducing their shipping costs compared with someone starting out from one or two locations.

As for Google, to really compete there, you need not just to walk the whole internet for fewer customers, but, and I think this is bigger, duplicate their massive bidding system infrastructure for selling ads. A startup would have to pay human advertising salespeople.

[crossi]

YouTube also has a lot of demos. A very useful tool for developers of a product to SHOW people exactly how to do something. Sometimes text or pictures just aren't enough.

[tubemonkey]

Originally Posted by crossi

YouTube also has a lot of demos. A very useful tool for developers of a product to SHOW people exactly how to do something. Sometimes text or pictures just aren't enough.

I found this demo most helpful

[Catlady]

Originally Posted by crossi

YouTube also has a lot of demos. A very useful tool for developers of a product to SHOW people exactly how to do something. Sometimes text or pictures just aren't enough.

I watched a lot of demos at YouTube when I was deciding on which e-reader to buy.

[tubemonkey]

Originally Posted by Catlady

I watched a lot of demos at YouTube when I was deciding on which e-reader to buy.

Inside Google's ultra-secret Google X Lab - they hooked up 16,000 computer processors and turned this creature loose on YouTube. Guess what it did?

It looked for cats

[susan_cassidy]

Originally Posted by Catlady

I don't want to see and be seen when I'm making a phone call.

You don't have to use video to use Skype for calls. We use it all the time at work to add people to a conference call.

[teh603]

Originally Posted by Barcey

The technology space is littered with once dominate players like this. It's not a monopoly, it's temporary market dominance and it can change very quickly.

Novell
WordStar
WordPerfect
Visicalc
Lotus 123
Ashton Tate (dBase)
Myspace
etc...

I'd agree on most of those; MS still has a lock on the desktop and laptop OS market, but with iOS and Android that could be changing in the not too distant future if the market jumps to tablets. There's already a virtual machine edition of Ubuntu Linux that can run on Android. I don't know how well it runs or how much of the repositories is available (or if I can change the frontend), but its there.

Originally Posted by AJ Starr

Which service is all the short homemade videos?

Its certainly not where everyone's sex tapes are. I've seen three or four sites dedicated to just that kind of stuff because Youtube doesn't allow it.

[hrosvit]

Originally Posted by teh603

Its certainly not where everyone's sex tapes are. I've seen three or four sites dedicated to just that kind of stuff because Youtube doesn't allow it.

You forgot the word "million" after the word "four".

[Ekaros]

Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg

You may be underestimating economies of scale.

To provide a web experience similar to that of Amazon, you theoretically have to write almost as many lines of code as Amazon has for its web site, despite having a tiny proportion of the market. This isn't quite true, but the number of lines of code you need to write to provide an Amazon-quality experience is enormous. Plus, Amazon has warehouses in the hinterlands of most major US cities, greatly reducing their shipping costs compared with someone starting out from one or two locations.

As for Google, to really compete there, you need not just to walk the whole internet for fewer customers, but, and I think this is bigger, duplicate their massive bidding system infrastructure for selling ads. A startup would have to pay human advertising salespeople.

I meant that it's easy to reach certain smaller amount of customers and not overly costly. Thousands or tens of thousands customers with smaller feature set isn't impossible to set up and doesn't need overly specialized hardware and software. On other hand things get costly when you try to be next Amazon.

To be huge you need to spend millions or hundreds of millions. Still on other end of scale you could probably run a business with a few thousands in revenue, not full time, but as extra income. This is why the monopoly is unlikely. Barrier of entry and to upkeep is much smaller than outside internet.