Monopoly

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A monopoly is a company which owns all of the companies in a given market segment. An example of an attempted merger into a monopoly is where the american cable corporation Comcast attempted to merge with Time Warner Cable. This would have resulted in a monopoly, where Comcast/TW would control the vast majority of the market share for ISPs, which would force consumers into purchasing intent connections from them. The FCC decided that they could not, in fact, merge, as it reduces competition and makes it unfair for consumers. Big monopolies are broken up by anti-trust laws, which are in place to prevent monopolies from existing and reducing consumer choice. In the past, the massive railroad monopolies have been broken up by antitrust laws. Some refer to the Big Six media corporations as an oligopoly, whereby said six control all (or virtually all, as the case may be) of a given market.