One need not attribute especially “greedy” motives to the behavior of firms, organizations or people to recognize that competition creates restraints on any such impulses, whether the actors are people, firms or industries.
In that regard, we might argue that the assumptions about concentration of power and inability to use markets to discipline firm behavior have changed over the past two decades.
It might once have been somewhat reasonable to assume that access provider unchecked power was most dangerous in the internet ecosystem. It might now be considered more important to address application provider and platform power, as competition seems less developed there than in the access business.
source: Digital Information World
These days, market power might be seen in browser share, app store share, platform share, social media, e-commerce, cloud computing, search and just about anywhere else one wishes to look within the internet ecosystem.
The point is that potential or actual monopolists or oligopolists can be found everywhere within the internet ecosystem. Furthermore, the power arguably is concentrated most significantly at the higher levels of the value or protocol stack: applications and platforms more than devices; devices more than operating systems; operating systems more than access providers.
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