Is monopoly power and market the same?
Good question. Wikipedia has a really excellent overview on monopoly and various aspects here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly_po… As you probably suspected, monopoly power, monopolization, and market are all closely aligned. When a company has monopoly power, they can act legally or illegally to capture more of the “market” (the market is just the potential customers out there). The amount of the market (or “piece of the pie”) that a company (thru monopoly or not) gets is called “market share”, ie your share of the market. Monopolies per se are not illegal. It’s how companies use or abuse their “monopoly power” (which you can sort of equate with “ability to bully”) that determines legality or illegality. For example, when companies act with “conspiracy to monopolize” or “in restraint of interstate trade”/commerce, they are usually acting illegally. Such illegal activities are called, importantly, “antitrust
