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You can’t keep looking at everything through the narrow definition of local choice. By that count, no anti trust action was necessary against Microsoft - users
by isignal 6y ago
You can’t keep looking at everything through the narrow definition of local choice. By that count, no anti trust action was necessary against Microsoft - users were always free to install Netscape. Comcast does not stop users from laying fiber to their home, so what’s wrong with Comcast?
The issue is whether making your own hardware also allows you to set policies on the software that can be run on it. One viewpoint is that these are separate industries and a dominance in one (smartphones) should not allow you to dominate the other (software distribution). There can be a legitimate discussion about what the boundaries are (operating system vs browser apps in case of Microsoft)
- nodamage 6y agoThe anti-trust claims that succeeded against Microsoft involved Microsoft forcing other companies to ship IE instead of Netscape. The coercion of third-parties is really where the anti-trust violations came from. Microsoft also held 95% of the operating system market at the time which was a big factor in the outcome.