Some people are arguing, that Brockhaus is death because it was a printed book which is no longer relevant in the internet age. But that was never a problem. The printed version of the Brockhaus is superior to the digital version. Because a normal computer monitor has only a low resolution display, but the printed book has 600 dpi for the images, and taking real paper in the hand is a great feeling. The reason why the Brockhaus is death has to do with it's high price. The last printed version was sold for around 3000 US$. Who want's to pay such amount only for taking a look into it? Libraries are the only institutions who can pay such amount of money. Normal will not.
Now let us compare the price for the Brockhaus with the price for the Nature journal. If somebody want's to buy the complete collection of Nature over the last 100 years he must pay huge amount of money. He get a real value, but how has such amount of money? Right, libraries are again the only institutions who can pay the price for all the scientific journals. Without librarires all the high-quality journals from Elsevier and Springer will be death too. Nobody, except from a billionaire, has enough money to get his own academic library. For example, if the idea is to only read 20 journals, the price will be higher then a sportscar.
That means, there is no real market for selling high-price academic journals. And no end-user is a customer of the Nature magazine. The reason, why this magazine can be sold, has to do with the current structure, namely the academic library complex, and tax-payer founded public education. To make the point clear: if the library no longer pay the money for Springer and Elsevier, both companies go to bankrupt.
Let us compare Elsevier with the Brockhaus case. Have they are ignored the internet age? No, Brockhaus had a great internet website and Elsevier too. What they have ignored is to reducing their costs. Brockhaus never reduced the price for his books and Elsevier had made the same decision. In an environment in which the price for a product is important, both companies are in trouble.
Now we can explain better, what predatory publishing is. If we are locating predatory publishers by countries, it is surpringly that nearly all publishers are settled in the BRICS countries. That are countries who are price-sensitive. They have not enough money. The main idea behind predatory publishing is simply to reduce the price for academic publishing.
Under the assumption that the outcome for Academic publishing is the same like the market for encyclopedia, the price is the most important factor. Only an organisation / company how is able to reduce the price of their product downto zero will survive. Wikipedia has won the battle with Brockhaus, because Wikipedia is for free. On the quality side, Wikipedia has surprisingly bad content. Especially in the beginning, the number of article were low and were written by amateurs. But on the long run this was never a problem. The customers have ignored the quality problems, and the detail problems were fixed in later iterations. My prediction is, that we will see for predatory publishers the same effect. Today predatory publishers have a very low quality, sometimes no peer-review is done and the quality of the submission is below the average. At the same time, the APC costs for publishing a paper there is excellent, that means it is lower then publishing a paper in a classical journal and on the long run this will make the success.
Price list
Without any doubt, Elsevier produces high-quality serious academic journals. On the quality scale they are superior to so called predatory publishers, and have the highest standard available. The papers in the journals are often break-through research, are formatted perfectly and in 50 years never contained any spelling mistakes.
But, the Elsevier pricelist is very high. The average journal costs around 1000 US$ per year in subscription cost, and if an author want's to submit a paper additional Article processing charge of around 3000 US$ per manuscript are charged. Only wealthy library and universities with billion of US$ of income are able to pay the price. The consequence is, that Elsevier is no option for universities with a small budget, online-only universities, or for private citizen who are interested in science in general. What Elsevier is doing is the same business model like the Brockhaus has done: they are selling their product only to university libraries because they are historical strong connected and the library is paying every price. The trend for the future is positive. That means, that Elsevier will increase their quality further, which results into better papers and higher prices. Perhaps, they are also increase the paper quality with golden-ink and use a leather cover. For example, the former Brockhaus publisher had also a luxury edition in sheepskin. The price was not 3000 US$ but 7000 US$.
Market dominance
It makes no sense to criticize Elsevier for it's role they are playing. Elsevier is according to the self-definition a high-quality publisher and the market leader. It is not up to them to change their status. It is up to the library to redefine the situation. They can for example decide to no longer buy Elsevier journals and they can also decide not to pay the APC charge for the author who want's to publish there. Not Elsevier, but the library has the obligation to come forward.