Amazon would, for instance, sell more Kindles by deeply discounting e-books, taking a loss on that segment while making it up on the hard goods side; using price to increase its market share and monopolization of the e-book market. The European commission maintains that even association pricing is unfair, because it limits the ability for non-mega giants to compete fairly in the market because their wholesale costs are often considerably higher than Amazon's retail price (Barker, 2011)
Price-fixing, though, is an agreement reached between businesses to buy or sell at fixed (manipulated) prices in order to control the market. The major difference between a monopoly and an oligopoly is the number of players that are manipulating the market -- monopoly means only one provides the product of service, but in an oligopoly, the product or service is available from a given number, yet still a few large businesses dominate this market and make it very difficult for new businesses to enter (Friedman, 1990; Schenk, 2010)
The Sherman Act of 1890 was one of the first attempts to restrict large companies who fixed price, output and then manipulated demand to maximize their products. Standard Oil was one of the prime early examples of a company that controlled markets to the point that the government felt was detrimental to the entry of other competitors (Bork, 1993)
Because of this monopoly, though, there are now changes and improvements in mining conditions; millions are employed worldwide (cutters, traders, designers, etc.), which generates income that flows back into society (Foldvary, 1999; Hart, 2002)
) that often use predatory or collusive practices to force customers into either advertising on their site, pricing to their scale, or in the case of Amazon, using predatory pricing on its e-books in order to capture market share. Now, combine all this with the vast amount of personal data (demographics and psychographics) these companies collect, all for free, based on browsing, purchasing, and repeat behaviors from consumers, and it is easy to see why many of these entities are under investigation for antitrust behavior (Fox, 2013)
The monopoly "owns" the market -- as in Amazon.com, for instance, holding about 85% of the e-book market, meaning publishers and other companies must adapt to Amazon's system or be unable to compete (Knapp, 2011)
Curt Flood sued major league baseball in 1972, arguing that its reserve system was illegal under the Sherman Antitrust Act, but the federal courts ruled against him in Flood v. Kuhn, but recommended that Congress examine baseball's exemption from antitrust laws (Spengler et al
Moreover, the Supreme Court has granted them non-statutory exemptions in the Jewel Tea and Pennington cases of 1965. Unions cannot be prosecuted on antitrust grounds when negotiating with employers about wages, hours, benefits and working conditions, although they are not permitted to "pursue the anti-competition interests of the employer group" (Wise and Meyer, 1997, p
Professional sports associations used the antitrust exemption for decades to keep on monopoly on their players and prevent rival organizations from forming. According to the Rozelle Rule in professional football, for example, even a team that signed a free agent had to pay cash compensation or agree to trade other players as replacements (Wong, 2010, p
The Federal HMO Act of 1973 is the legislation stated to have "introduced the principle of competition to the national health policy debate." (Sage, Hyman and Greenberg, 2003, p
Stated to be the circumstances enabling this unique positioning of the FTC are the following: (1) the sorry state of competitive in provider and payor markets today; and (2) the possibility of a major overhaul of health insurance under reform proposals. (Greaney, 2009, p
In this order of ideas, it was possible that Hewlett-Packard sign its contracts with another software vendor, as it had initially stated; they did not however do this. Intel learned a valuable lesson on policy and corporate culture and Sun Microsystems enjoyed a prosperous period after Microsoft decided to contract the operating language that they were developing (Cooper, 1999)
Microsoft was not, however, prohibited from "integrating" products within its operating system. It was this distinction that would "later become an important argument for Microsoft in the antitrust suit set against them" (Dale and Lewis, 2004, p
As some analysts showed, "the company says it will beef up training and also implement an online checklist for PSD [Platform and Services Division] employees as well as those working in the Entertainment and Devices, or E&D, division. E&D employees will have the training starting next month, with those from both divisions scheduled for multiple sessions through February" (Hunter, 2005)
Finally, the ruling judge in the case found that Microsoft's entire approach was based on its desire to increase its profits and in doing this, the company has competed in a manner described as unfair, if not unethical. Additionally, he argued that the best interest of the consumers, as promoted by Gate's organization, was in fact not the core element of new endeavors, as the company had argued, but that whenever a new product or service was being projected, this would be done in order to serve the financial interests of the organization rather than increase customer utility (Kegel, 2006)
From the standpoint of the utilitarian perspective, the company is able to seek out those actions which maximize its gains, but in doing this, it must remain aware of the needs of others. More specifically, they can work towards their goals as long as these do not impede with the goals of others (Leiss, 1988)
On the one hand, the organization did follow its own agenda, but on the other hand, in doing this, it stopped other parties from achieving their goals -- while Microsoft strived to maximize its profits, it also created a situation in which its competitors found it harder to develop on the market. The virtue perspective sees that an individual or an entity should base its decisions and actions on values which create virtue, such as honesty and integrity, and these should be used to pursue the most important goals (Tiberius, 2008)
Polis specifically stated "t a time when the national economy continues to stagnate," wrote Polis, "it's not clear to me why the FTC should be focusing on a product that consumers seem very happy with, search engines." (Franceschi-Bicchierai, 2012, p
And more abroad -- unfairly channels users to its own growing network of services at the expense of rivals'." (Schonfeld, 2011, p
MSFT Monopoly The Microsoft antitrust case was based around three premises -- that Microsoft monopolized the market for operating systems, that it monopolized the market for browsers and that it bundled its browser and operating system in order to use its market power in operating systems to control the market for browsers. The company was also accused of having illegal agreements with channel partners to keep Netscape's browser out of the market (Economides, 2001)