9 Comments

1. 

   confab

   April 15, 2008, 3:42 pm

   good luck lara:D
   muchas love from singapore:)

2. 

   Deane

   April 15, 2008, 4:12 pm

   ” ‘monopoly’ is a situation in which one company controls an industry or is the only provider of a product or service”

   Right. so how can Microsoft be a monopoly?

3. 

   Chanuka

   April 16, 2008, 9:23 am

   Deane,

   Did we say Microsoft is a monopoly? Please read carefully.

   Still it is an interesting question. How many of us use anything other than Microsoft Office package? Or Outlook to check our mails?

   Some Gen X still remember using Word Perfect 5.1, Lotus 123 and Harvard Graphics. May I know what happened to these products?

4. 

   Donald Gaminitillake

   April 16, 2008, 1:28 pm

   Monopoly could be ‘International” or “National”
   Or a govt could use it to protect the farmers or a certain group.

   US govt protect over 14 types of agricultural products.
   Sri Lanka cannot export peanuts to US.

   Very debatable subject

   If we talk of Lanka there is IT monopoly, Domain monopoly, Insurance monopoly, Technical monopoly at various institutions, etc etc

5. 

   Punchi Putha

   April 16, 2008, 4:12 pm

   Or a govt could use it to protect the farmers or a certain group.

   Donald uncle,

   How a monopoly ‘protects’ famers? Do you refer to paddy marketing board?

   I thought farmers are better off in competetive markets because they get a bargaining power. How can famers bargain with a monopolist?

6. 

   Deane

   April 17, 2008, 12:25 am

   Chanuka I thought when you said,

   “who else would be more qualified to define ‘monopoly’ [mə nóppəlee]than Microsoft”

   the implication was quite obvious. what is it then, specifically qualifies MS to define monopoly? :)

   In any case, I for one use, explicitly, gmail for email. It’s surprising that Google rarely gets accused of being a search engine monopoly isn’t it?

   I wouldn’t call either of them monopolies, if the consumer chooses to patronize that product/service overwhelmingly over the other. so be it.

7. 

   Chanuka

   April 17, 2008, 7:27 am

   Deane,

   Interesting discussion. In fact the question you raised was somewhat discussed at the colloquium.

   Rohan did mention that Google was a different kind of a monopoly. (I might not fully agree.) What is Google’s market? It earns revenue not directly from users (like Microsoft) but from the advertisers. So even if Google is a monopoly it is NOT in the search engine market. It does NOT sell search engine services. It only sells advertising space.

   Perhaps Google, like flickr and even wikipedia, are ideal examples for natural monopolies. (I have no idea how wikipedia earns a revenue, but I guess it has to)

   You seems to have the premonition that monopolies/oligopolies are always bad. Not necessary, as Joseph Schumpeter, said.

   Put in a nut shell, I still follow PIPU’s motto still: ‘Competition wherever possible; regulation where necessary’.

8. 

   Deane

   April 17, 2008, 2:01 pm

   I don’t think Google is a monopoly either, because we have choice. I can always ‘yahoo’ instead of ‘google’, lot of people do, I choose not to. I choose gmail over yahoo mail, and as a result choose Google docs, groups instead of Yahoo variants. because the ‘costs’ (defined as what i want to give up to get something) of using another service for these things would be high.

   People don’t use Linux over Windows for the same reason. The cost, what we have to give up – re-training, familiarity, lack of familiar software support is just too high, even though Linux is essentially free, monetary wise.

   So I think Google DOES sell search engine services, they sell it for free. Try asking google to shut down search enginge services, they obviously can’t coz that’s the core business. They got to keep selling it for free, and make it better. Coz’ even in the Advertising market, that’s essentially what advertisers buy from google – how many people use their service. So I should say, they sell the search engine services free to us, and at a fee to advertisers.

   I think wikipedia functions on donations if I’m not mistaken, Flickr, again selling-for-free business model. Wired had an interesting articlesome time ago about this. I don’t agree with some parts, but it’s an interesting feed.

   I struggle though, to find examples of actual monopolies created without the aid of government and regulation.

9. 

   Chanuka

   April 17, 2008, 3:35 pm

   Deane,

   Examples of actual monopolies created without the aid of government and regulation?

   Your difficulty is because such monopolies;

   (a) do not exist in developed competitive markets. The very existence of them suggest an inefficiency in system.

   (b) temporary. Cannot survive for long without any govt intervention

   Basically every market first starts as a monopoly. IBM was a monopoly in 1960s, Kodak was a monopoly in personal cameras for some time, TI had a monopoly for microprocessors in mid 1970s for a short period.

   Both hotel and newspaper industries were natural oligopolies in Ceylon in the first half of 20th century. That had nothing to do with govt regulation.

   Another example is Dialog offering telecom services to Jaffna in 2002. No restriction for others to enter market, but they did not for the high entry barriers.