The Hidden Monopolies Controlling Your Favorite Apps
Three companies control 95% of what you see online. While you chase users, they extract billions from every click,
Three companies control 95% of what you see online. While you chase users, they extract billions from every click, download, and transaction in your business.
Your revolutionary app idea isn’t as independent as you think.
Behind every successful startup lies a web of hidden monopolies extracting wealth from your business. While you grind for users and revenue, invisible giants collect taxes on your infrastructure, distribution, and payments. These aren’t the obvious monopolies everyone discusses. This is about the companies that make the internet possible and have turned basic utilities into extraction machines.
The Three-Layer Extraction System
Every digital business operates on three layers, each dominated by monopolies most entrepreneurs never notice:
Infrastructure: Amazon Web Services controls 31% of all cloud computing, making money every time your app processes data, stores files, or handles traffic spikes.
Distribution: Apple and Google control 99% of app downloads through their stores, taking 15-30% of every transaction with zero alternatives.
Payments: Stripe processes $1.4 trillion annually, taking a cut of nearly every digital purchase while making themselves impossible to replace.
This creates compound extraction. Multiple monopolies stack on top of each other, each taking their slice. It’s like paying rent to three landlords for the same apartment.
AWS: The Internet’s Tax Collector
Amazon Web Services isn’t just cloud hosting. It’s digital infrastructure that charges for everything your business does online. Server requests, data storage, bandwidth, even electricity. AWS has turned basic internet operations into metered utilities.
The numbers reveal total market capture. AWS serves 2.2 million companies, processes 500 million API requests daily, and operates across 37 countries. When your app scales, AWS gets paid. You store user data, AWS gets paid. When traffic spikes during your viral moment, AWS especially gets paid.
The real power comes from dependency. Moving off AWS requires rebuilding your entire infrastructure. Companies spend years and millions trying to migrate, often giving up because switching costs are impossibly high. Venture capitalist Chamath Palihapitiya calls it “a tax on the compute economy.” Every startup that grows ends up paying AWS forever.
App Store Duopoly: 99% Control
Apple and Google created the perfect duopoly. They control smartphone app distribution with literally no alternatives. Want mobile users? Pay their tax.
The math is simple. Apple’s App Store has 2 million apps, Google Play has 2.8 million apps, and meaningful alternatives have zero. Both charge 15-30% commissions on every transaction. Epic Games fought this for years, spending millions in court. Result? Google was declared an illegal monopoly in 2024 but continues operating while appealing.
Apple perfected monopoly maintenance by claiming their control protects users. When courts forced them to allow alternative payments, Apple simply charged a 27% commission on external transactions. Nearly identical to their original 30% tax.
For founders, this creates impossible situations. Your app’s discovery, distribution, and monetization depend entirely on two companies that view you as a revenue stream. They change algorithms, policies, and fees whenever it benefits them. You comply or disappear.
Stripe: The $1.4 Trillion Middleman
While everyone argues about social media monopolies, Stripe quietly controls global payments. Processing over $1.4 trillion annually, Stripe handles transactions for 95% of major marketplaces and has become the financial backbone of the internet.
Stripe’s monopoly works differently. They offer excellent developer tools and APIs, making integration easy. But once you build on Stripe, switching becomes nearly impossible because payments are your business’s most sensitive component.
Their 2.9% + 30¢ fee seems reasonable until you realize they’re processing millions of transactions simultaneously. That’s billions extracted from the digital economy. Money that could fund innovation, pay employees, or reduce prices instead flows to Stripe shareholders.
Stripe expanded beyond payments into banking, lending, and business incorporation. They’re building comprehensive financial infrastructure that increases switching costs. Once Stripe handles your payments, banking, and operations, leaving becomes impossible.
Cloudflare: The Invisible Gatekeeper
Most founders never heard of Cloudflare, but they control traffic for millions of websites. As the internet’s content delivery network, Cloudflare sits between users and apps, deciding what loads fast.
Cloudflare processes 32 million HTTP requests per second and protects 25% of internet traffic. When they experience outages, entire web sections go dark. When they drop customers for policy violations, those businesses often can’t find alternatives.
For startups, this creates another dependency. Want global speed? Need Cloudflare. Want DDoS protection? Need Cloudflare. Want reliable uptime? Need Cloudflare. They made themselves essential to basic internet functionality.
The Compound Tax Problem
Individual monopolies are bad enough. Combined, they create devastating compound extraction. Every successful app pays multiple taxes:
- Infrastructure tax to AWS: 10-30% of revenue
- Distribution tax to Apple/Google: 15-30% of revenue
- Transaction tax to Stripe: 2.9% plus fees
- Performance tax to Cloudflare: Monthly service fees
An app generating $1 million might pay $200,000 to $400,000 in monopoly taxes before covering actual business expenses. These aren’t competitive rates. They’re tribute payments to digital feudal lords.
This explains why profitable-looking startups struggle with unit economics. They’re not just competing with other apps. They’re funding the monopolies that control their existence.
Why Innovation Is Dying
Hidden monopolies don’t just extract wealth. They control what gets built. AWS pricing favors certain applications, subtly shaping what entrepreneurs create. App store policies directly control what innovations reach consumers. Stripe’s requirements influence how startups handle payments.
The result? A homogenized digital economy built around monopoly preferences rather than user needs or innovative solutions. Real innovation happens within boundaries these companies set, not beyond them.
Traditional Antitrust Is Broken
These monopolies evolved beyond traditional regulation. They don’t just control markets, they are the markets. Breaking them up wouldn’t work because their power comes from controlling essential infrastructure.
Network effects make each platform more valuable as usage grows. Switching costs make competition practically impossible. Vertical integration lets them squeeze competitors at multiple levels. Global scale prevents consistent regulatory response.
Alternatives Are Emerging
Smart entrepreneurs are building around the extraction system:
Alternative Infrastructure: Railway and Render offer simpler, cheaper alternatives to AWS.
Progressive Web Apps: Sophisticated web applications bypass app stores entirely while functioning like native apps.
Cryptocurrency Payments: Direct crypto payments eliminate traditional payment processors.
Edge Computing: Distributed platforms like Deno Deploy reduce dependence on centralized cloud providers.
Open Source: Projects like Supabase build developer-controlled alternatives to proprietary services.
These alternatives aren’t perfect yet, but they represent the beginning of a less extractive digital economy.
The Coming Disruption
Hidden monopolies built empires during an era of cheap money and light regulation. That era is ending.
Rising interest rates force investors to scrutinize monopoly taxes more carefully. Geopolitical tensions push governments to reduce dependence on American tech. Developers actively seek alternatives to avoid vendor lock-in.
Most importantly, entrepreneurs are building companies designed specifically to compete with these monopolies. The biggest opportunity of the next decade isn’t another app. It’s building the infrastructure that apps depend on.
Your Decision
Every founder faces a choice: accept hidden monopolies as business costs or actively work to build alternatives.
Starting out? Factor monopoly taxes into your business model. Calculate unit economics including extraction costs. Build with switching in mind, avoiding deep integration with single providers.
Scaling? Develop contingency plans for reducing dependencies. Explore alternative providers. Consider progressive web apps over native mobile apps. Investigate direct payment methods.
Thinking big? Consider competing directly with hidden monopolies. Entrepreneurs who build next-generation infrastructure will capture value currently extracted by AWS, Stripe, and app stores.
The Revolution Is Already Starting
The internet was supposed to democratize business and reduce innovation barriers. Instead, we created gatekeepers more powerful than traditional monopolies ever were.
But this story isn’t finished. The next internet chapter is being written by founders who refuse to accept that a handful of companies should control the entire digital economy.
Hidden monopolies seem permanent, but every empire falls. The question isn’t whether these will be disrupted. It’s whether you’ll build their replacements or keep paying their taxes forever.
The revolution won’t be televised. It’ll be deployed.
Sources
- Synergy Research Group – AWS Market Share Data (2025)
- HG Insights – AWS Market Report (March 2025)
- Fortune – Google App Store Monopoly Court Decision (August 2025)
- BTW Media – Stripe Monopoly Analysis (November 2024)
- Chargeflow – Stripe Statistics (2025)
- Wikipedia – App Store Legal Cases and Market Data (2025)
- Computer Weekly – Coalition for App Fairness Report
- Bits About Money – Open Banking and Payment Competition Analysis (2025)
