The biggest monopolies in the world are concentrated in a handful of industries where one or two firms control the overwhelming majority of the market: internet search, smartphones, online retail, advanced chipmaking, oil reserves, eyewear, card payments, and prescription drug processing. Several of these companies are now defendants in the most consequential antitrust cases in a generation, with federal courts issuing rulings in 2024, 2025, and 2026 that could reshape how they operate.
Google, Meta, Amazon, and Apple
Alphabet, Google’s parent company, handles over 90 percent of all internet searches worldwide.1Statcounter Global Stats. Search Engine Market Share Worldwide Alphabet posted over $400 billion in total revenue for 2025, most of it from advertising tied to that search dominance.2U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Alphabet Announces Fourth Quarter and Fiscal Year 2025 Results
In August 2024, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia issued a 277-page opinion concluding that Google is a monopolist that violated Section 2 of the Sherman Act by maintaining its dominance through anticompetitive exclusive dealing contracts. The court’s remedy order bars Google from entering or maintaining exclusive agreements that tie the distribution of Google Search, Chrome, or its AI assistant to any device. Google must also share certain search index data with competitors and offer search syndication services so rivals can deliver competitive results while building their own capacity.3U.S. Department of Justice. Department of Justice Wins Significant Remedies Against Google
Meta reaches nearly four billion monthly active users across Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger. Its dominance rests on switching costs. A new social platform doesn’t just need better features; it needs billions of existing social connections that users have spent years building.
Amazon captures roughly 40 percent of all U.S. online retail sales.4Statista. Market Share of Leading Retail E-Commerce Companies in the United States in 2025 In 2023, the Federal Trade Commission sued Amazon, alleging the company biases its search results to favor its own products over higher-quality offerings from third-party sellers and uses its marketplace power to prevent merchants from offering lower prices elsewhere.5Federal Trade Commission. FTC Sues Amazon for Illegally Maintaining Monopoly Power That case remains active.
Apple is next. In March 2024, the Department of Justice filed suit alleging Apple illegally maintains a monopoly over smartphones by selectively blocking developers from accessing key iPhone capabilities. The complaint identifies specific conduct: suppressing cloud-streaming services, degrading cross-platform messaging, limiting third-party smartwatch functionality, and restricting tap-to-pay access for competing digital wallets. In July 2025, the court denied Apple’s motion to dismiss, finding that the government’s allegations of a 65 percent smartphone market share and 70 percent share of the performance smartphone segment were sufficient to proceed.6National Association of Attorneys General. U.S. and Plaintiff States v. Apple, Inc.
ASML and TSMC in Semiconductors
ASML is the only company on Earth that builds extreme ultraviolet lithography machines, the equipment required to manufacture the most advanced microchips used in smartphones, AI processors, and data centers. Each machine costs roughly $250 million. Without one, a chipmaker simply cannot produce cutting-edge semiconductors. Firms in China and the United States are trying to develop alternatives, but none has succeeded.
The result is a single-company bottleneck where ASML’s production schedule effectively dictates how fast the entire computing industry can advance. When ASML has supply constraints, every major chipmaker from TSMC to Samsung to Intel feels the impact.
TSMC, the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, occupies a parallel position one step downstream. As a pure-play foundry, TSMC manufactures chips designed by other companies and commands roughly 72 percent of the global foundry market. In advanced nodes, the smallest and most powerful chip designs, its dominance is even more pronounced. Nvidia, Apple, and AMD all depend on TSMC’s fabrication capacity, and a single facility disruption in Taiwan could ripple through the global supply of everything from AI servers to automobiles.
Saudi Aramco and De Beers
Saudi Aramco controls the world’s largest proven crude oil reserves, exceeding 260 billion barrels.7Aramco. Oil Production As a state-owned enterprise fully controlled by the Saudi government, Aramco’s production decisions are intertwined with national policy and OPEC strategy, meaning a single company’s output choices can move global oil prices.
State ownership also provides legal advantages. Under international law, state-owned enterprises engaged in sovereign activities can claim immunity from lawsuits in foreign courts, a protection unavailable to private oil companies.8International Court of Justice. Separate Opinion of Judge Robinson
De Beers offers a historical case study. From 1888 through the early 2000s, the company controlled 80 to 85 percent of the global rough diamond supply, using centralized distribution to set prices and restrict access. That grip has weakened as competitors in Russia, Canada, and Australia developed independent supply chains and lab-grown diamonds introduced a new category. De Beers still wields significant influence, but its era of near-total control has ended.
EssilorLuxottica in Eyewear
EssilorLuxottica, formed through a 2018 merger of France’s Essilor and Italy’s Luxottica, dominates the global eyewear industry through vertical integration most consumers never notice. The company owns Ray-Ban, Oakley, Persol, and Oliver Peoples while also manufacturing frames under license for luxury brands including Chanel, Prada, and Versace. It controls the retail side too, operating LensCrafters, Sunglass Hut, Pearle Vision, and Target Optical. Through Essilor, it makes the lenses themselves, including the Varilux and Transitions brands.
A competitor trying to enter the market would need to build manufacturing capability, develop brand recognition, and establish retail distribution simultaneously. When a single company can set wholesale prices, retail markups, and insurance reimbursement rates for the same pair of glasses, the competitive dynamics are fundamentally different from a normal market.
Visa and Mastercard
Visa and Mastercard together process about 90 percent of card payments outside China. They don’t issue credit cards directly or lend money to consumers. Instead, they operate the electronic rails over which transactions travel, collecting fees on virtually every swipe, tap, or online purchase. Interchange rates set by these networks typically fall between 1.65 percent and 3.15 percent per transaction, depending on the card type and merchant category.9Mastercard. Mastercard 2024-2025 U.S. Region Interchange Programs and Rates
Merchants cannot refuse to accept Visa or Mastercard without losing a huge portion of potential customers. Building a competing network from scratch would require partnerships with thousands of banks across dozens of countries. China’s UnionPay operates independently within its borders, but no global alternative has gained meaningful traction. The Durbin Amendment, implemented through the Federal Reserve’s Regulation II, caps debit card interchange fees for large issuers.10Federal Reserve. Regulation II – Debit Card Interchange Fees and Routing Credit card interchange remains largely unregulated.
Pharmacy Benefit Managers
Three companies process roughly 80 percent of all prescription drug claims in the United States: CVS Caremark (owned by CVS Health), Express Scripts (owned by Cigna), and OptumRx (owned by UnitedHealth Group). These pharmacy benefit managers sit between drug manufacturers, insurance companies, and pharmacies, negotiating the prices that determine what patients actually pay at the counter. Each PBM is owned by a parent company that also operates a health insurer and a pharmacy chain. CVS Health, for example, owns Caremark, Aetna insurance, and CVS Pharmacy locations.
The FTC sued all three PBMs for rebating practices that allegedly inflated the list price of insulin. In February 2026, the FTC secured a settlement with Express Scripts requiring fundamental changes to its business practices, with projected savings of up to $7 billion in patient out-of-pocket costs over ten years.11Federal Trade Commission. Pharmacy Benefits Managers (PBM) The cases against the other two PBMs continue.
Utilities as Natural Monopolies
Not every monopoly exists because a company outmaneuvered its competitors. Electricity, water, and natural gas almost certainly come from a single provider in your area, and that’s by design. Building a second set of power lines or water mains to serve the same neighborhood would double the fixed costs without any benefit to consumers.
Public utilities commissions set the rates these companies can charge, typically allowing them to recover their costs plus a reasonable profit margin. Average residential electricity rates across the country range from roughly 11 cents to over 40 cents per kilowatt-hour depending on the state, reflecting differences in fuel sources, infrastructure age, and regulatory decisions. Since customers cannot switch providers, rate regulation is what stands in for competition.
What Makes a Monopoly Illegal
Being big isn’t illegal. The Sherman Act of 1890 outlaws monopolistic business practices, and Section 2 prohibits monopolization, attempted monopolization, and conspiracies to monopolize.12National Archives. Sherman Anti-Trust Act (1890) Courts look for two elements: possession of monopoly power and exclusionary conduct that maintains that power through means beyond having a superior product.13Congressional Research Service. Antitrust Law – An Introduction The Supreme Court has defined monopoly power as the ability to control prices or exclude competition, typically inferred from a market share of at least 60 percent combined with substantial barriers to entry.14U.S. Department of Justice. Competition and Monopoly – Single-Firm Conduct Under Section 2 of the Sherman Act – Chapter 2
When enforcers prove a violation, remedies range from fines to structural orders. The Google case illustrates structural remedies in action: rather than simply imposing a fine, the court prohibited specific business practices and ordered the company to share proprietary data with competitors. The FTC and DOJ share enforcement authority and often target different aspects of market power, with the FTC focused on Amazon’s marketplace conduct and PBM rebating practices while the DOJ pursues Google and Apple.
The pattern across every one of these industries is the same: a firm achieves dominance through some combination of innovation, capital investment, and network effects, then uses that position to raise barriers against anyone who might challenge it.