Amazon the Monopoly? Hard to Prove

Publishers Weekly considers The Seattle Times' article on why it would be hard to prove that Amazon is a monopoly.

While Amazon’s critics reflexively call the retailer a monopoly, Green notes that a company which commands overwhelming market share—Amazon is estimated to sell 60% of all e-books, and 40% of all print books—is not necessarily a monopoly. He writes that despite the company's dominance, "proving Amazon is a monopoly, let alone an abusive one, wouldn’t be easy. In legal terms, the word monopoly relates to a company’s ability to control a defined market because of a lack of competition. While there’s not a specific market-share number that defines a monopoly, the threshold is typically quite high."

And, also, this:

U.S. antitrust law focuses on harm to consumers, not to producers or suppliers. Amazon may well be squeezing publishers to get lower prices. But the damage to publishers, or the authors whose works they publish, isn’t likely to hold much sway with courts, said Eleanor Fox, a New York University Law School antitrust-law professor."