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“I still use Apple iTunes on my Windows PC to get mp3s onto my iPhone, where I then use the first party “Music” app to listen to them”

Literally me!

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Well this was a ride, thanks for writing it. It is difficult to come up with models that will work across the majority of cases, so I appreciate what you have come up with here.

And I wonder if it isn't a monopoly that is valuable, or the platform they tend to create to become a monopoly.

In the example you gave of Microsoft's monopoly + slack allowing the internet and web 2.0. I think if Netscape would have won—or just not have died—we would have gotten the web 2.0 much sooner, and not as some technical wizardry of getting javascript and XmlHttpRequest to walk on their hind legs, but an actual designed platform for applications on the web. The whole time Microsoft was neglecting their browser once they had their monopoly and Netscape was out of the picture.

And in the IBM example on your chart, the only thing IBM lended to the PC industry, was their BIOS—which is not high technology. And yet, that was everything because it lended a platform that made the PC industry valuable—programs could be exchanged across different vendors.

We should be supporting platform monopolies, these allow many other players to capture value, and it becomes in their interest to strengthen the platform.

The Spotify example is a good one though, and I don't know if I would call that a better platform for musicians than Apple Music? I guess because the record labels got some equity?

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founding

Lmao I did a project for a freshman econ class on Riot's price discrimination, talking about how cool it was that the game was funded by enthusiasts and free for everyone else. That was peak NA hype, between 2016 MSI - 2017 Worlds, and right before Prestige Skins. I don't know if Riot monetized NA players more than China's players, but it seems safe to assume so. The last thing I saw re: League was that TSM couldn't drop the FTX from their Twitter handle, and now this skin... you hate to see it.

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