Amidst the Olympic roundup and I am happy my country won a paralympic medal but that's not where I am going to today. Amidst the entire olympics, the election saga, CZ road to freedom, and even Durov's news, one news still found its way to the front pages of media outlet news and that's the news that Google was termed a Monopoly. The District Judge ruled that Google was a monopolist and acted as one to maintain its monopoly.
When this news broke out, I wasn't surprised and so were a lot of people, but people were also surprise to see that such verdict was made on Google only because we know that every trillion dollar company in the world today is a monopoly of some kind illegally and everyone just thought the regulators will keep looking the other way while this happens. I am not sure what the outcome of the ruling will be because this is not the first time that trillion dollar company CEOs are facing congress or other regulators but it looks like they always have oil on their skin that allow them slip off or are we going to say that their lobbyists are doing great jobs?
Since this is changing, it looks like it is going to be a bad news for the giant monopolies in the US and around the world because it looks like when the United State is able to clamp on something, most nations have the nerves to also do the same just like almost every country is hitting Binance now because the US were able to make a strong statement with its' CEO. Going back to the United States, you will notice that companies have reduced or have been bought out by monopolies and this is because it is their only way to remain profitable.
Before you start to label all monopolies in your area as illegal, I need to state it that not all monopolies are illegal, and some are even good for consumers. As a company, it is fine to have market dominance if your product is better than other products and competitions but it becomes a problem when no competition is able to compete because you have such a strong commanding lead.
If users Google things up because they want to get the best result, then it is not a crime because users surely prefer them but as it stands, there are other search engines hat are better or do the same job as Google, not putting advertiser search results first but Google entrench on this companies making them invisible or unnoticed. Google doesn't even go buy the companies, at least we would know they are actually breaking the anti-trust laws directly, rather they will pay other mobile and gadget producing companies to make Google their default search engine even though it is not the official search engine of the product. This makes it very difficult for other search engine companies to compete because I could bet that majority of the people reading this post do not spend time changing default search engines on your phone and PCs.
Unlike in the past, we are in a more technology inclined generation with increased population, and being a monopoly is gold rush now. Compared to the past, the goods and services we consume today vary from what we do in the past where companies that were the biggest were product based instead of service based. Where monopoly is a problem is when it dominates the market because it can undercut its competition or force suppliers not to work with them, but monopoly is fair when you are making better products or services.
Apple is a monopoly with its product and service system, Microsoft is a monopoly when it comes to Operating system that are not in the Apple ecosystem, Google is a monopoly when it comes to search engine and online video (Youtube) and Meta is a monopoly when it comes to Memes used by both Boomers and GenZ life activity but then this companies are killing small companies.
One way that big companies have learned to stay a monopoly is to just buy out competitors outrightly, just like the recent Mars and Kellanova agreement deal where MARS intends to purchase Kellanova, the company responsible for the production of Pringles and other snacks for 36 billion dollar. One reason why companies are becoming monopolies is because they have a lot of spare cash and are privy to easy loans at low interest rates for a long period of time which they just use to acquire other companies.
For me, I do not think Monopolies will die out completely, and they are not going to play by rules because there are always loop holes in the rules and these are the loop holes that thee companies are willing to exploit. When it comes to buying out companies, private equity owners have also seen selling startups to large monopolies as a way to exit with profit so, a lot of things have to be done to curb the power of monopoly if they cannot be completely eliminated.