Monopoly is a smokescreen word. Antitrust is not about monopoly, it is about abuse of market position.
If your company has 10% of the market, and the rest has 1% each, you can still be slapped for antitrust if you start using that position as leverage in a different market.
Well, there's Microsoft, which has been penalized on various occasions in the States and the EU despite not actually being a monopoly (there were plenty of other operating system vendors out there, Apple among them).
And then you have Google, which has been taking quite a bit of flak from Europe lately.
I'm sorry, could you be more specific? Please link to specific cases that meet the criteria (antitrust cases where the company is found guilty of anti-competitive practices that do NOT involve the company abusing their (mon|olig)opoly power in a certain market). Both those companies are involved in many cases, antitrust or otherwise, and I'm unable to find one that fits the bill. I think you (and digi_owl) are incorrect.
Neither of them were or are actually monopolies (Google isn't the only search engine in the world, and Microsoft wasn't the only PC operating system vendor in the world even during the 90's), so literally any of the cases you've found would be applicable.
An antitrust case can still be levied for conspiring to become a monopoly (as Microsoft did with its strongarming of OEMs combined and its bundling of Internet Explorer with Windows). Apple has even run afoul of that at various times (like when it got dinged for its monopolistic behavior regarding e-books; it certainly didn't have an actual monopoly, but that still fell under antitrust regulations).
"Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson issued his findings of fact on November 5, 1999, which stated that Microsoft's dominance of the x86-based personal computer operating systems market constituted a monopoly" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Corp...
A company does not have to be the sole supplier in a market to be considered a monopoly in the eyes of the law.
> Apple has even run afoul of that at various times (like when it got dinged for its monopolistic behavior regarding e-books; it certainly didn't have an actual monopoly, but that still fell under antitrust regulations).
But that case didn't just involve Apple. It also involved the oligopoly of book publishers, who worked with Apple to engage in price fixing against Amazon.
That still leaves us with Google, which (as far as I know) is not considered a "monopoly" by any measure of the term.
With that said...
> Microsoft's dominance of the x86-based personal computer operating systems market constituted a monopoly
If you read further in the paragraph you quoted, you'll find that Microsoft was specifically engaging in monopolization (i.e. the process of becoming a monopoly), which was the specific reason why it got dinged. It also states the and in there - that they had taken measures to disrupt attempts to counter their monopolization.
This analysis is consistent with the Sherman Antitrust Act (the law under which Microsoft was cited), specifically Section 2: Every person who shall monopolize, or attempt to monopolize, or combine or conspire with any other person or persons, to monopolize any part of the trade or commerce among the several States, or with foreign nations, shall be deemed guilty of a felony [. . . ]". It's also consisted with the Sherman Antitrust Act's intent, as specified by its authors (George Hoar: "... [a person] who merely by superior skill and intelligence...got the whole business because nobody could do it as well as he could was not a monopolist..(but was if) it involved something like the use of means which made it impossible for other persons to engage in fair competition.").
This isn't even mentioning the failure of the court to recognize that there were viable altneratives to Windows that, in their words, "a significant percentage of consumers world-wide could substitute for Intel-compatible PC operating systems without incurring substantial costs". GNU/Linux (which was designed for "Intel-compatible PC"s to begin with), three of the four mainstream BSDs (NetBSD, FreeBSD, and OpenBSD), OS/2, and a variety of other operating systems existed at the time of that ruling. The only way the ruling's rationale would hold true is if they interpreted "Intel-compatible" to mean "Windows-compatible", in which case the ruling is directly applicable to Apple's behavior now (since Apple - like Microsoft then - is attempting to monopolize the application ecosystem of iOS; if Microsoft can get dinged for monopolizing a specific market segment, then so can/should Apple). In this case, Apple is "attempt[ing] to monopolize" smart watches within the the iOS application market (just like how Microsoft "attempt[ed] to monopolize" browsers within the Windows application market). The difference is that Apple's attempts are much more obvious.
Sorry buddy, you've gone off the deep end here. Microsoft was found in a court of law to have a monopoly in the OS market, and used their market power illegally. Full stop. This is not a controversial fact. You are at best mincing words, and at worst misrepresenting history, to suggest something different.
> That still leaves us with Google, which (as far as I know) is not considered a "monopoly" by any measure of the term.
I don't know how you've come to this conclusion. It is very reasonable to argue that Google has a monopoly on internet search. Whether they are engaging in antitrust is more unclear, but they wield an amount of power in the search market that no other company even gets close to.
Yep. This is the long and short of it. Apple is careful not to get monopolies which allows them to be as anti-competitive as they want. Not sure why this got downvoted. Typical HN..
For example, Microsoft got in trouble for pre-installing IE on Windows because they had monopoly in the OS market. If they didn't have that monopoly, they would not have been penalized.
Having a monopoly might put you under the microscope, but you certainly can't get away with anticompetitive practices like price fixing or wage fixing even if you don't have a monopoly.
Can you link to specific examples of companies being found guilty of things like price fixing and wage fixing, where the company was not a monopoly, or part of an oligopoly?
Looks you're correct, thanks. Reading up on this a bit, I was wondering if Apple/Google/Intel/Adobe/etc constituted an oligopoly, but I don't see how that could true in this case. Also reading up on the Sherman Antitrust Act (which is what they were in violation of), the section that applied here does not require a monopoly or oligopoly.
Right, the fact it is not illegally anticompetitive per se shows that it is an answer to your original question.
> Doing an anti competitive practice is legal if you don't have a monopoly?
A practice being anti-competitive (in a legal sense) depends on the act being done by a company that is a monopoly, or part of an oligopoly.
For example, a company giving their product away for free is not illegal per se. Say, as part of a promotion, in order to get their product in consumer's hands instead of a competitor's product. In a healthy market, this is a valid way to do business.
But, if the company that decides to give their product away for free is a monopoly, and the result of that act is squashing what little competition might exist or is entering the market, then this same act (giving the product away for free) is illegal.
If you define the market as smart phones. If you define the market as smart watches, Apple could well be dominant in 6 months and this behavior would not be OK.
