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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."
free market is what tends towards monopolies eventually. because there is competition, and nothing to prevent the big players from getting bigger, unless they make a HUGE mistake, all 'free' markets only function as free for all initial chaos environments until a hierarchy and order is established. as per the below post :
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1847700&cid=34083272
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How hard would it be to go a week without Google? Or, to up the ante, without Facebook, Amazon, Skype, Twitter, Apple, eBay and Google?
Pretty fucking easy, actually. My God what are we becoming when people think this shit is so important?
Back in my day (well, ok, my grandfather's) we worried about important shit like steel, or oil. Hell, even telephone wire - it's physical, someone owns it, and they control it completely. Those are monopolies - you're strangled by one provider.
Facebook? Apple? Amazon? Give me a fucking break. Oh noesies, I can't go read about something cute one of some guy I barely know's brat kids did! Oh no, I have to buy a less expensive version that functions just as well of some gadget I don't need! Uh oh, I have to walk my fat ass to Target or order from one of the other billion internet stores!
Author makes common mistake of confusing a monopoly with most successful provider of something that one could, if one wanted, get from 20 other places.
The term "free market" is used to mean "competitive market" and is also used to mean "un-regulated market", despite the fact that few markets are both competitive and un-regulated. When someone uses the term "free market" with out clarifying which they mean, they are either confused, or they are trying to confuse you.