I was claiming you didn't read the bloody article mate. I am not trying to be rude, but if a sworn statement by the people selling books[0], who have the receipts, to the highest court in the land doesn't convince you Amazon itself stated similar numbers on the record.

Amazon head of kindle saying apple is overstating market share, we have at least 70-80 percent, "[apple's] math doesn't add up", in the cnet article Amazon; We have 70-80 percent of the e-book market"[1]

Crediit Suisse also released a famous report with the 90% figure, which was discussed by the wallstreet journal[2]. The daily finance also stated that figure citing interviews as well as the CS report.

I was just having a bit of a laugh at the absurdity of charging them with anti-competitive tactics, when in fact they introduced competition in a welkl agreed upon narrative that is quite literally the definition of a monopoly. It can also be evidenced buy the fact that, they engaged heavily in dumping and while not 100% proveable, the booksellers were aware of their price structure. Knowing that dumping, being charachterized by an outsized market actor selling significant capacity below market value to drive competition out of business, we can retroactively assume with some confidence that booksellers claims of dumping, followed by a steep price reduction and numerous inbdustry actors going out of business could be a decent heuristic to assdume they are correct.

Once again, my point isn't whether Apple was right or wrong, but that it is difficult to assume a rational body would conclude given this information, that Apple had inflicted 450M worth of damage, and also ignore the tight concentration of supply Amazon was allowed to control.

The second point I will now make, which I make here daily now, is that these dynamics are dangerous and we need to be careful about reliance on a single entity as it can be damaging. It is unpredicatable how the laws are enforced, granting a monopoly to one company who uses it to upsell ads and tracking software and fining them under 1/10th of the CEOs annual pay for a 4 year offense, and the implication that a player with 3/4ths of the market control(likely more by their own admission) was allowed to manipulate prices while 2 companies buying and selling goods, negotiated the price they were willing to sell to the market, were served a 450m fine for anti competitive dealings.

I am very concerned about how things are playing out. And I hope others are as well.

edit: further youyr original posit:

>"People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices."

I wanted to point out that while if we assume Smith to be correct here, it is irrelevent. You seem to raise the point that 2 people of the same industry meeting to discuss business is bad for competition. However, Apple a buyer/market maker meeting with suppliers is what one would expect, as that is how markets work. Maybe they were nefarious, but meeting with buyers and negotiating the terms of a new platform and price structure seem fairly in line with what I would expect to find in the economy. If the publishers themselves all met in secret and withheld supply then I don't see how, even if complicit, it would solely fall on apple & if they did in fact do that, Amazon had secured the rights, so Apple would actually be worse off having colluded & agreed to a higher price, while a market leading competitor enjoyed a better rate.

[0]http://www.scotusblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/No-15-5...

[1]http://www.cnet.com/news/amazon-we-have-70-80-percent-of-e-b...

[2]http://blogs.wsj.com/marketbeat/2010/02/16/analyst-amazon-e-...

[3]http://www.dailyfinance.com/2010/02/17/amazons-e-book-market...