Net monopolists

A hat tip to Jim for spotting this interesting piece by John Naughton in today’s Observer exploring the emergence of dominant monopolies in many web 2.0 application markets such as auction houses, social networking and web search engines. I have chosen the article as the basis for my students to post to our weekly forum. Are the likes of Facebook, Google and Amazon natural monopolies? Should we be concerned about dominant monopolies if they exist?

Unit 1 Micro: The Facebook Floation [3 Feb 2012]
Unit 3 Micro: Is Facebook’s Social Network Dominance Eroding? [12 Jan 2012]
Unit 3 Micro: Patent Wars- A Touchy Subject for Apple [16 Dec 2011]
Unit 3 Micro: Amazon launches the Kindle Fire [1 Oct 2011]
Personal Learning Networks in Economics Teaching [12 Sep 2011]
A2 Micro: Innovation in Markets [4 May 2011]
Key AS Micro Terms: Competition and Monopoly [17 Apr 2011]
Innovation: Google’s Driverless Car [31 Mar 2011]
World’s Most Innovative Companies [17 Feb 2011]
Ways to watch movies - cross elasticity of demand in action! [3 Feb 2011]
Growing a presence on Facebook [23 Dec 2010]
Smarter Googling - Using the Toolbar [1 Dec 2010]
Google investigation [30 Nov 2010]
Google Public Data – Using in Economics Assignments [28 Nov 2010]
iLand - Shareholders and Taxpayers feel the Pain [24 Nov 2010]
Does Facebook have a monopoly over the internet? [21 Nov 2010]
The Rise and Rise of Internet Monopolists [14 Nov 2010]
Experimenting with Google Docs - the Rise of a Digital Conglomerate [8 Nov 2010]
Online Resources E-Letter October 2010 [31 Oct 2010]
A2 Micro: Monopoly Price and Output [28 Oct 2010]
The Business Objectives of Mark Zuckerberg [25 Oct 2010]
Cows with IP addresses and social networks as modes of production [22 Oct 2010]
Competition in action: Google vs the World! [6 Oct 2010]
External Growth - Google’s Acquisition Boom [21 Sep 2010]
Will Facebook Float? Perhaps in 2012! [24 Aug 2010]
Popularity of social network sites [22 Jul 2010]
Google TV - Excellent example of a joint venture [21 May 2010]
The economics of Google [6 Apr 2010]
Apple and patent races [8 Mar 2010]
Contestable Markets - Google launches the Nexus One [6 Jan 2010]
Google and Average Revenue Product of Labour [13 Nov 2009]
Walmart and Amazon Price War - Hyper Efficiency and the Consumer [23 Oct 2009]
Kindlenomics [11 Oct 2009]
The Times interviews Google’s Eric Schmidt [4 Oct 2009]
How to start the next Google or Facebook [28 Sep 2009]
Keep up-to-date with the Economics Blogs with our widgets! [17 Sep 2009]
Browser Wars! [1 Sep 2009]
Economics Snapshot - Google draws away from Microsoft and Yahoo [29 Jul 2009]
Economics Snapshot - Sharing Information on Social Networks [27 Jul 2009]
Windows for a new generation? [9 Jul 2009]
Public Good-le [26 Jun 2009]
And another thing [19 May 2009]
A2 Micro: Contestable Markets [15 May 2009]
Revision: Network Economies of Scale [11 May 2009]
Amazon benefits from a weaker pound [25 Apr 2009]
You Tube’s Losses [17 Apr 2009]
Stacking weekends and the long tail [13 Nov 2008]
Are we tempted by deep discounts? [11 Nov 2008]
Standing on the shoulders of giants [24 Sep 2008]
A Dad and his Son go mining ..... once more [10 Sep 2008]
Web browser war hots up with release of Chrome [9 Sep 2008]
Left on the Shelf [31 Aug 2008]
Dan Ariely speaks at Google [24 Jul 2008]
Declan quizzes the Amazon boss [24 Jul 2008]
Announcing the Economics Blog Widgets! [20 Jul 2008]
Commodity prices and vertical integration [2 Jul 2008]
Newbies on Google’s horizon [21 Jun 2008]
Borders v Amazon [15 Jun 2008]
Cultural economics [15 Jun 2008]
Amazon’s new warehouse [20 Apr 2008]
Revision: Natural Monopolies [17 Apr 2008]
Revision: Economies of Scale and Scope [2 Apr 2008]
Predictably Irrational on Facebook [25 Mar 2008]
Search engine market heads towards duopoly [6 Mar 2008]
Google - Profits up + Share Price Down [1 Feb 2008]

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