The Monopolies That Dominate the Internet

Tim Wu has a piece up at the Wall Street Journal pointing out that the free-market, open Internet — "competition in its purest form" — has evolved to be dominated by monopolies. Wu argues that this is nothing new, and that each wave of information technology in the US has followed a similar pattern. "Today's Internet borders will probably change eventually, especially as new markets appear. But it's hard to avoid the conclusion that we are living in an age of large information monopolies. Could it be that the free market on the Internet actually tends toward monopolies? Could it even be that demand, of all things, is actually winnowing the online free market — that Americans, so diverse and individualistic, actually love these monopolies? ... Info-monopolies tend to be good-to-great in the short term and bad-to-terrible in the long term."

Comments

Re:'Free market' means muddled thinking

[Suki I]

How the hell does this work? When at any point has a free market destroyed a monopoly?I think litigation and regulation are often what contrain a monopoly into failing.. If IBM could have just crushed Microsoft with goons when they realized their contract mistake, we'd have IBM Windows. If it weasn't for legal restrictions and regulation, Microsoft would never have beaten IBM..

Oil, telephone, rail, communications, steel.. these were all broken by regulations and trust busting.

I think you know very little of history and have not really thought you statements through.

Is competition too hard for you to get? We do not have that in regulated markets. We do in FREE markets.

Microsoft never had a monopoly and neither did IBM. Even with them, market forces overtook them before their show trials were over.

No, we had a big fancy politician talk about "trust busting" that carved out a bunch of sacred markets for certain corporations, enforced by the government. BTW, this is a rare response from me to an AC, don't expect another.

Re:god.

[unity100]

businesses do not have police power ? what do you think the private security firms are ? hell, in the last decade, that even reached private ARMY scale. blackwater is better equipped than any united states army platoon. already many companies take care of 'security' in their holdings ...

such naivete ...

Re:god.

[unity100]

idiot.

yea i called you an idiot, because you are not using an ounce of brainpower before shooting off an argument. the other option would be to take you as a disrespectful troll, and cut talking with you. instead, im calling you idiot. you can transplant naive, fool, rookie, whatever you want in place of it. they all point to the same point :

blackwater company is a PRIVATE group which was allowed to do business as mercenaries. they are able to set up a private army, BECAUSE government has allowed establishment of private armies. basically, government 'privatized' the 'military sector'. its quite 'free market' and its quite 'ayn rand'.

before government allowed their creation, private individuals wouldnt be able to set up armies. it was forbidden. government allowed this to happen, so now private individuals can set up armies, under the guise of "security contractors". a new business field has opened up, thats great, in line with 'free market'. after all free market should regulate it, shouldnt it.

but now, there ARE private armies, owned and directed by private individuals. blackwater had contracted with government in iraq, but heaven knows how many other newly spawned private 'security contractors' have contracted which wealthy individuals or corporations or interests for doing what.

so now, a megacorporation which owns some percentage of a state as private assets in someplace in usa, can actually hire a private army and put them there, for 'security'.

first contractor being the government is irrelevant. what matters is, allowing creation of private armies. that means, military, army, is no longer in government monopoly, and private individuals can set up private armies.