4 comments

• 

  Ted

  2 years ago

  Microsoft *is* a monopoly. That finding *was never* overturned (Jackson wisely issued his judgement in seperate rulings -- the origianl punishment was overturned, but the monopoly classification never was).
  
  To be declared a monopolist does not require 100% market share. Share approaching 100% is a good indicator of monopoly power, as are excessive profits, ability to set prices arbitrarily to maximize profit, etc. Hell, even with all the competition in the browser market, IE still wields close to 90% of the market. MSWindows continues to enjoy close to the same marketshare, and MSOffice has penetrated even higher, EVEN IN the presence of strong competition like OpenOffice. In the absence of monopoly power, all of that would be unheard of.
  
  Of course, being a monopoly in itself isn't illegal. But if a monopolist wields that special power unfairly, it is the government's job to step in and knock it down. In the case of Microsoft, we have seen a company that bullies its competitors and partners, threatens to use its monopolies to crush those who don't agree with it, set arbitrary prices with OEMs and charge prices FAR above those of the competition for almost identical products. It can do this *ONLY* because it is a monopoly.
  
  Microsoft is now paying the price for its behavior. By an amazing travesty of justice, it was spared much punishment by the government. The remedies that eventually came out of the trial are a joke. Fortunately, civil suits respect the findings of fact from that trial, subjecting Microsoft to an appropriate (and different) standard of behavior. No one should shed a tear over the fact that Microsoft is now getting a few tiny mosquito bites from competitors -- it's far better for MS than the remedy they deserved: a mandatory break up of its business units.
  
  Because of past bad behavior, Microsoft is still in a very limited 'timeout'. It has payed almost no penalty for its illegal activity to date. Don't whine that it can't add one tiny little feature to its Monopoly word processor.
  
  As for consumers suffering because of this missing feature, they are free to use one of the many alternatives instead, including OpenOffice or the free plugin from Adobe.
  
  You are right: government should not pick the winners and losers -- but this isn't about that. This is about government being derelict in enforcing the laws that it is bound by.
  
  If we let all monopolists off the hook as easily as we let Microsoft off, the country will soon be a centrally-planned utopia, with barons like Bill Gates at the top, controlling production, setting prices, and trying to create supplies that anticipate demand without the benefit of a free market.
  
  Free markets necessarily require competition. Monopolies destroy competition. That is why monopolies are such a threat to capitalism, and must be dealth with specially. For now, we only have the government to help us out here. If you have a better solution, by all means, lets take a look. But to complain that the poor monopolist is suffering because it can't make PDFs is a bit too much for me to stomach.
• 

  dmarti

  2 years ago

  Ted is right about there needing to be some kind of corporate punishment for abuses of monopoly, but conduct remedies are really inefficient ways of doing this compared to what every librarian does to people who "monopolize" a book: a fine.
  
  For example, MSFT's first consent decree required them to drop per-CPU pricing and do other conduct remedies in how they deal with PC OEMs. But they got out of that by calling payments to OEMs who play ball "co-op marketing money" instead of "discount".
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  tempystgreen

  2 years ago

  man, Microsoft already had one anti trust case already. Maybe they should just give the monopoly game up and simply stick with operating systems and software suites
• 

  shorturl

  1 year ago

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