Comment by jabl

Well, in a way all businesses want to become monopolies. And hence they try to build moats around their core businesses to prevent competitors from entering that market, or in the worst case, causing the entire market to become commodified. The form of that moat varies depending on what said core business is. One version is even mentioned in the article:

> An­other way that I like to ex­press that is “cre­ate a desert of profitabil­ity around you”. I once had a strat­egy pro­fes­sor de­fine the Google busi­ness model some­what like that, where “Google tries to make every other busi­ness around it free or ir­rel­e­vant”…A desert of profitabil­ity shifts con­sumers to you, and keeps com­peti­tors away.

> Wouldn't a Zero to One / Blue Ocean mindset be smarter?

So if you're about to start a business, should you create a new market (becoming a monopolist in that market), or should you enter some existing highly competitive and commodified market? The answer sounds obvious. Once you do that, then the next question is how do you maintain your monopoly position within that market? See above.