Is Internet Explorer a monopoly?

What is a monopoly?

There are several meanings of the term monopoly:

• A pure monopolist in an industry is a single seller.

It is quite rare for a firm to have a pure monopoly –

except when the industry is state owned and has a legally

protected monopoly position.

• A working monopoly: A working monopoly is any

firm with greater than 25% of the industries' total sales.

• An oligopolistic industry is characterised by the

existence of a few dominant firms, each has market

power and which seeks to protect and improves its

market position over time.

• In a duopoly, the majority of market sales are

taken by two dominant firms.

(Source tutor2u.net)

Also there are some characteristics of a monopoly

such as barriers to entry (patents, branding etc).

Internet Explorer has 80% of the market and

there are a lot of barriers to entry for Google's

Chrome such as advertising and branding. Internet

Explorer has his own well-known brand and it might

be really hard for Chrome to enter to this market and

to compete successfully.

However Google has also well-known brand but not in

the web browser market and I think Google's brand

might compete with Microsoft.