[governance] a reality check on economics

[Milton L Mueller]

The “geopolitical influence” of the US and Europe is quite different, since all major Internet corporations –in fact monopolies in their respective domain- are American : Google, Cisco, Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, e-Bay …  Nowhere in the APC statement these monopolies are addressed despite the strong links they have with Internet governance.
[Milton L Mueller] The dialogue on enhanced cooperation is becoming polluted with simplistic and inaccurate economic nostrums.
May I request that the word “monopoly” be used with at least some attention paid to its actual meaning?
From the MIT Dictionary of Economics: “a firm is a monopoly if it is the only supplier of a homogenous product for which there are no substitutes and many buyers.” This definition can be made less restrictive by relaxing the assumption that there are no substitutes, to include imperfect substitutes.
But even so, none of the firms cited above are monopolies. None. Some have varying degrees of market power in specific sectors, but none are close to being _global_ monopolies. Apple, for example, does not even surpass Samsung in its share of smartphones.
I am also curious to know what is going on when people group the regulation of equipment manufacturers (Apple, Cisco) under the rubric of “internet governance.” Same for computer operating systems.
Moreover, I wonder whether the people who think UN-based institutions are an appropriate response to market power in the ICT sector have done their homework. There are powerful, well-resourced antitrust and economic regulatory agencies in the U.S., Europe, and various other countries in Latin America, Asia and elsewhere. The operate under specific laws, not under a theory of resentment (that’s a good thing), laws which have evolved for decades and which have established precedents and bodies of research behind them regarding the nature of market power, the impact of regulation and antitrust intervention on innovation and consumer welfare, etc.
Moreover, it’s not like these firms are running amok. There have been in the recent past, or currently are underway, serious tangles with Microsoft, Intel, Google, Apple, and Facebook on various issues involving their market power* - by antitrust authorities, privacy regulators and consumer protection regulators. Have our agitators made a case that these entities are incapable of doing their jobs? If so, how would the political economy of regulating big business improve at the global level – or would it get worse?
Is the absence of European companies in the list of globally competitive firms, Mssr. Fullsack, due to some cosmic injustice, or simply to the over-regulated, protectionist, nationalist structure of European Internet and ICT markets, which does not produce globally competitive firms? Why is it that tens of millions in subsidies for a European search engine haven’t produced anything? Might it be because consumers decide for themselves what is a better service and that people don’t care much whether a service provider is American, European or Chinese as long as they can use their own language?
Could there be some serious engagement with these issues and, perhaps, a little more knowledge and a lot less populism? The idea that some vague notion of “governance” is going to save us from any and every problem in the internet economy sounds to me like the fulminations of wannabe politicians seeking power for themselves and not interested in actually solving problems.
(*Note the absence of Cisco from that list – the equipment mfring biz is highly competitive and Cisco is declining in market share, flat in revenue, and considered “on the ropes” by stock investors for the past 2 years). Huawei, on the other hand…

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