Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login

Hm. If I understand the cellophane paradox, it says that the "substitutes exist" does not imply "there is no monopoly".

That seems different from your argument, which I understand to be "only a monopolist would make it easy for consumers to choose a competitor". But again, the conclusion that Google is a monopolist seems to be baked into this logic -- would you really say Google is not a monopolist if they did not offer search engine choice?




> which I understand to be "only a monopolist would make it easy for consumers to choose a competitor"

No, not "only".

The argument is that while non-monopolists have a motivation to add those choices, monopolists have a motivation too.

Therefore seeing the end result isn't very strong evidence for whether something is a monopoly or not.


I agree with your statement. The comment I was responding to does not:

> If anything this is evidence of Google’s search engine monopoly and Google built the selection feature into Chrome it in furtherance of that monopoly power




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: