5 companies run the internet: Google, apple, amazon, Microsoft and facebook. Each is focused on a (significantly either wide or narrow -- with Google at 8 and facebook at one) range of markets over three main areas: hardware (cloud, tablets and phones), software (search, social and maps), and content (text-publishing, music and audio-video). The battle ground that these companies are using to test their mettle is mostly in the heads of people with disabilities (in the broad sense -- ie. The disability to put up with the frustration of going to the apple store to purchase a mac vga adaptor to do a presentation you have stored on an apple device, or the disability to pay for a 5000 dollar Braille display, or the disability to stop fighting a religious war because all of your intelligence is hidden behind the fact that there is no Siri to do speech recognized Google searches in your language). So why couldn't some company just copy the basic functions of all of these markets, make them simple and accessible, monopolize the whole thing as one platform with no advertisements and argue in federal court that they are providing a platform for the competition of real content providers - not just the people who can get their shIt together enough to make sure they have all of their adaptors in a row?
-- JesusHChrist, Nov 11 2012

Trusts and monopolies http://en.wikipedia...ki/Trust_(monopoly)
for [pocmloc] [Vernon, Nov 12 2012]

Antitrust?
-- rcarty, Nov 11 2012


Why is it called "antitrust"? I never hear anyone referring to a monopoly or an exploitative coercive market hogging position as a "trust".
-- pocmloc, Nov 11 2012


// The disability to put up with the frustration of going to the apple store to purchase a mac vga adaptor to do a presentation you have stored on an apple device //

Self-inflicted suffering => masochism => paraphillia => perversion.

// or the disability to stop fighting a religious war because all of your intelligence is hidden behind the fact that there is no Siri to do speech recognized Google searches in your language //

If you had any intelligence, you'd learn English.
-- 8th of 7, Nov 11 2012


// I never hear anyone referring to a monopoly or an exploitative coercive market hogging position as a "trust".//

One of the legal meanings of "trust" (as a noun) is "a group of entities collaborating to monopolize the market".

This is, in turn, a specific aspect of the more general term "trust", meaning a group of people (as in "The Brains Trust" or "The National Trust").

Note that neither of these has anything to do with the term "trust" as used in Southern Ireland, meaning "force that makes sometin' go".
-- MaxwellBuchanan, Nov 11 2012


Hence the phrase "Trust Potheen", potheen being a hypergolic fuel ...
-- 8th of 7, Nov 11 2012


"Alex, I'll take Paragraph Breaks for $500".
-- normzone, Nov 11 2012


Well I can see that being against the National Trust is a worthwhile political endevour.
-- pocmloc, Nov 11 2012


And I was hoping for a board game.
-- RayfordSteele, Nov 12 2012



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