Learn French: En effet, elle s'étend dans le but de contrôler le marché. - Indeed, it expands with the aim of controlling the market.

Both express purpose (like "in order to"), but dans le but de is more formal and emphatic. It literally translates to "with the goal of" or "with the aim of". You will often see it in business, journalism, or academic contexts, making it a perfect fit for this sentence about market expansion.

The lesson says we can use a noun after dans le but de. How would that look here?

Instead of the infinitive verb contrôler, you could use the noun equivalent, le contrôle. The phrase would become: dans le but du contrôle du marché. Notice that de + le contracts to du. Both versions are correct, though using the infinitive is often a bit less clunky.

Why is "expands" translated with the reflexive verb s'étend?

The base verb étendre means "to stretch", "to lay out", or "to spread" something else. Because the company or entity (represented by elle) is doing the spreading to itself without an external direct object, it becomes reflexive: s'étendre (to spread oneself, or to expand).

Why is contrôler in the infinitive when the English translation says "controlling"?