Modern Day Monopolies

You would think that all that has happened in the past with monopolies, they wouldn't still exist. However, there are still a lot of monopolies, or at least "near-monopolies" existing in the US. There are more than these, but I wrote about the ones that I found more interesting.

Waste Management
Garbage is heavy and holds little economic value, so it makes more sense to send to just send one provider down the same street vs having multiple providers down the same street. Transportingtash is also expensive, so haulers always seek the cloosest landfill they can find. Waste Management owns and operates several hundred recycling centers, landfills, and transfer centers in North America.

AB InBev
This company produces and distributes over 200 types of beer around the world. They do this by owning a number of the best-selling beer brands like Budweiser, Michelob Ultra, Beck's, Stella Artois, Bass, and etc. They also recently bought SABMiller (the industry's second largest player) for 100 billion dollars. They have now an estimated control of about 46% of global beer profits and produce about 27% of the world's total beer supplies. Their net income in 2013 as over 14.3 billion dollars.

Illumina
This company has consistently brought to market new products that have significantly driven down the cost curve of genetic testing. It appears that Illumina will continue to dominate the genetic testing market thanks to the lauch of its NovaSeq Series. This will allow researchers to sequence a genome for as little as 100 bucks. That low pirce is attractive from insurers and consumers and in turn help this company remain in its industry leading position.

Intuitive Surgical
This company launched its da Vinci robotic surgical system in 1999. This tool assisted surgeons with general laparoscopic procedures and enabled smaller incisions and led to less blood loss, which also helped the  patient recover faster. The company has mre than 4,000 da Vinci systems in use around the world.

Google
Google controls about 67% of the web search market. They have competitors like Microscoft and Yahoo, but they own just 18% and 11% of the market. Google makes most of its money from advertising.

Facebook
Over 71% of online adults use facebook. They ahve around 900 million unique monthly visitors compared to Twitter's 310 million. They have a net income of about $1.5 billion and even bought Oculus Rift for $2 billion dollars.

Luxottica
Luxottica is the biggeset manufacturer of glasses in the world. They are international and have attempted to buy every other eyewear company it could afford. Their sunglasses are sold through a number of different bands: Ray Ban, Killer Loop, Vogue, T3 and Persol. They also manufacture eyewear for Chanel, Bulgari, Armani, Ungro, Anne Klein and Moschino. THey also control the leading vision care providers in the US: Eye Med and Vision Care (produces 130,000 frames per day). They produce over 80% of eyewear worldwide and have made over $9.7 billion dollars. Strange enough the sunglasses you buy for 30$ are often similar to the 350$ pair because they are made by the same company.

Netflix
NOT A MONOPOLY YET, but one in the making. People don't really use DVDs anyore and isntead stream movies and TV shws from the INternet. Netflix has over 50 million subscirbers and is becoming an Internet superpower. They have other competitors, but don' seem to lose ground.

Microscoft
Microsoft controls the personal cmputer market by owning over 75% of the market share.