4 ms·

The thing that astounds me the most is that it's the single clearest example of a monopoly in history. There really is no better example of a monopoly in any in

The thing that astounds me the most is that it's the single clearest example of a monopoly in history. There really is no better example of a monopoly in any industry ever. Microsoft had >95% of desktops running Windows, and the many various government organisations all over the world tasked with preventing and dealing with these sorts of monopolies did nothing.

bayesian_horse 10y ago
In all fairness, there is hardly anything to be done about it. You just can't come up with a full MS Office replacement fast enough to be relevant. Short of completely dismantling Microsoft, or even seizing their assets by governments (two options I don't approve of), I don't see a way to break that monopoly as long as this kind of Office Software is relevant.
- dukeluke 10y ago
  Exactly. An industry with a high barrier to entry is prone to becoming a monopoly.
  - madez 10y ago
    This is why I think governments should fund libre alternative projects substantially and long-term. It is a matter of national interest. LibreOffice Calc is missing features that are required by many users? The government should pay for it to be developed. The ironic thing is that it is not even expensive to break this monopoly. So many countries share this interest in breaking the monopoly. Why the EU spends billions to protect farmers but is not willing to spend millions to finish and maintain a nearly workable independent software infrastructure is beyond me. Most politicians are old and most old people don't understand computers, the internet and it's consequences. They don't get what is at stake. I still hope that some day people will get elected in Europe that understand theses issues.
    - tracker1 10y ago
      The issue here, is that even as LO is firming up, the masses are moving to google docs and o365's online options... Which does reduce some barriers to switching, but introduces other development costs. MS is really good at making software, maybe not the best at UI/UX, but meeting needs in a relatively short period of time compared to competitors. o365 seems at first glance to be a bit better than google docs, and MS was pretty late to the party there. Government can very rarely outpace private business in terms of getting things like this done.
      - bayesian_horse 10y ago
        The government can fund private business developing free software to outpace another private business. For example Continuum Analytics is partly funded by public sources to work on open data science, competing against commercial offerings from SAS, for example. The Blender Foundation has some public funding for developing new features for the Blender 3D software suite, partly through public film funding.
        milesrout 10y ago
        >The government can fund private business developing free software to outpace another private business. Why? Governments are the only ones with the tools to actually deal with monopolies properly without competing with them: breaking them up, fining them extremely fiercely, etc.
      - milesrout 10y ago
        >Government can very rarely outpace private business in terms of getting things like this done. That's not really true, it's never ever really been true. It's capitalist propaganda that 'the Government is useless', and it's mainly propped up by extremely liberal governments (Republicans and Democrats, for example) that make the Government useless on purpose then say 'hey look the Government sucks'. Not that it should ever need to be Government writing software to compete against Microsoft. Governments have much, much better tools for dealing with monopolies than trying to outcompete them. They're the only ones that have those tools. They should use them aggressively.
  - milesrout 10y ago
    No, an industry with a company that has a very long history of extremely anticompetitive practices is prone to becoming a monopoly. There's nothing inherently pro-monopoly about office software or operating system software. There is something inherently pro-monopoly about Microsoft.
- milesrout 10y ago
  Dismantling Microsoft would absolutely be the correct response. That's what they did to Bell or AT&T or whatever they were called, and it was a good thing. Break up Microsoft into a company that makes Office, a company that makes Windows and a company that does .NET.
  - yellowapple 10y ago
    Hell, Microsoft already internally operates like that anyway. Might as well take it to its logical conclusion :)

bayesian_horse 10y ago

In all fairness, there is hardly anything to be done about it. You just can't come up with a full MS Office replacement fast enough to be relevant. Short of completely dismantling Microsoft, or even seizing their assets by governments (two options I don't approve of), I don't see a way to break that monopoly as long as this kind of Office Software is relevant.

dukeluke 10y ago
Exactly. An industry with a high barrier to entry is prone to becoming a monopoly.
- madez 10y ago
  This is why I think governments should fund libre alternative projects substantially and long-term. It is a matter of national interest. LibreOffice Calc is missing features that are required by many users? The government should pay for it to be developed. The ironic thing is that it is not even expensive to break this monopoly. So many countries share this interest in breaking the monopoly. Why the EU spends billions to protect farmers but is not willing to spend millions to finish and maintain a nearly workable independent software infrastructure is beyond me. Most politicians are old and most old people don't understand computers, the internet and it's consequences. They don't get what is at stake. I still hope that some day people will get elected in Europe that understand theses issues.
  - tracker1 10y ago
    The issue here, is that even as LO is firming up, the masses are moving to google docs and o365's online options... Which does reduce some barriers to switching, but introduces other development costs. MS is really good at making software, maybe not the best at UI/UX, but meeting needs in a relatively short period of time compared to competitors. o365 seems at first glance to be a bit better than google docs, and MS was pretty late to the party there. Government can very rarely outpace private business in terms of getting things like this done.
    - bayesian_horse 10y ago
      The government can fund private business developing free software to outpace another private business. For example Continuum Analytics is partly funded by public sources to work on open data science, competing against commercial offerings from SAS, for example. The Blender Foundation has some public funding for developing new features for the Blender 3D software suite, partly through public film funding.
      - milesrout 10y ago
        >The government can fund private business developing free software to outpace another private business. Why? Governments are the only ones with the tools to actually deal with monopolies properly without competing with them: breaking them up, fining them extremely fiercely, etc.
    - milesrout 10y ago
      >Government can very rarely outpace private business in terms of getting things like this done. That's not really true, it's never ever really been true. It's capitalist propaganda that 'the Government is useless', and it's mainly propped up by extremely liberal governments (Republicans and Democrats, for example) that make the Government useless on purpose then say 'hey look the Government sucks'. Not that it should ever need to be Government writing software to compete against Microsoft. Governments have much, much better tools for dealing with monopolies than trying to outcompete them. They're the only ones that have those tools. They should use them aggressively.
- milesrout 10y ago
  No, an industry with a company that has a very long history of extremely anticompetitive practices is prone to becoming a monopoly. There's nothing inherently pro-monopoly about office software or operating system software. There is something inherently pro-monopoly about Microsoft.
milesrout 10y ago
Dismantling Microsoft would absolutely be the correct response. That's what they did to Bell or AT&T or whatever they were called, and it was a good thing. Break up Microsoft into a company that makes Office, a company that makes Windows and a company that does .NET.
- yellowapple 10y ago
  Hell, Microsoft already internally operates like that anyway. Might as well take it to its logical conclusion :)