Bumble, Coffee Meets Bagel, Grindr, Once, Happn, and a few other apps that are probably unique to Europe come to mind as alternatives just from the top of my head.

Doesn't seem terribly monopolized to me, especially if you factor in that one person often uses multiple of those apps.

In theory, yes, that's true. That is, if we completely ignore the Pareto principle(which I'm willing to bet is in full effect here). Looking at what they have on their portfolio(Tinder, okcupid, match, etc.), I think it's safe to assume they own 80-90% of the market share. That is pretty close to monopoly if you ask me.

> That is, if we completely ignore the Pareto principle(which I'm willing to bet is in full effect here)

That's exactly why I mentioned people using multiple apps, which lessens the effect quite a bit. Users on dating apps are also rather fickle, and will jump to the next best app once that becomes available, so even with a big market share, there isn't much lock-in and there isn't much of an outsized benefit to the position as a market leader. E.g. in the European market Bumble appeared a few years after Tinder and within 1-2 years basically everybody that I know that used Tinder before at least tried out Bumble and many continue to use both or switched outright. Of course that's very anecdotal, but current statistics for number of US users for both apps paint a similar picture[0].

> I think it's safe to assume they own 80-90% of the market share. That is pretty close to monopoly if you ask me.

In 2016, they apparently owned 25% of market share[1], which is pretty far away from a monopoly if you ask me.

It seems a bit weird to me to group them together with Alphabet/Facebook/Apple. The others span far more markets, and have much much stronger lock-in effect which they can unfairly leverage to push other products. Compared to that, Match Group is laughable.

[0]: https://www.statista.com/statistics/826778/most-popular-dati...

[1]: https://www.fool.com/investing/2020/06/07/why-match-group-st...

Sure, it's not the same as Google/Facebook but you get my point. I spent 8 and a half years developing a CRM for mobile applications and it's not like I haven't poked my nose into the petabytes of data. The reality is that people(understand companies) are fighting for app time, that is how much time you spend in their app. Personally I've never used and never will use a dating app for a million and one reasons but I know plenty of people that do and have wasted money on them. Having spoken to them, they do spend most of their time on tinder/okcupid. As far as minutes in app goes, the Match group is unmatched(no pun intended). I'm sure it would raise some eyebrows, if people knew they were spending that much money on one company. I have a friend who has subscription to all of those. I wonder if he realizes that he is spending more on somewhat twisted services offered by a single company than I am on the countless gcp services I use for my personal projects.

Dating apps are such a monoculture now, and it’s almost certain this is why

or maybe it's just that we've hit upon what works given current technology and human psychhology.

Works for who? Sure, there are success stories of online dating, but I wager a large amount that most people's experiences with them are negative.

Negative compared to what, though? A fictional imagined experience? Other kinds of dating? That's not a fair comparison.

Here’s a fun fact. If you read the Match Group annual reports, they’ll often say that their biggest US competitor is Facebook, Instagram and other social media sites.

...so duopoly??

Badoo?