3 ms·

According to antitrust law, it is illegal for a monopoly to do things that are perfectly fine for normal companies to do. For example, it is not legal to use d

According to antitrust law, it is illegal for a monopoly to do things that are perfectly fine for normal companies to do. For example, it is not legal to use dominance in one thing as leverage to achieve dominance in another thing. Microsoft used their monopoly (> 70% market share) in OS to go for a monopoly in many other things, includind web browser. We are still living with the aftremath of this today, as the software ecosystem is much more constrained than it aught to be. Back then, the FTC actually did things about monopolists breaking the law, so they set MS back on their heels. And MS employed many anti-competitive practices to beat the competition. Things like buying their way onto the boards of banks, which happened to hold loans for their competitors. And then calling the notes or cancelling lines of credit.

McLaren_Ferrari 5y ago
> Microsoft used their monopoly (> 70% market share) in OS to go for a monopoly in many other things, includind web browser. A monopoly in a market where the price of the product is zero /s . It's incredible to me that people still think Netscape was wronged even though the market has shown for decades now that consumers are not willing to pay for browsers. Consumers want to be able to get on the internet as soon as they start their brand new computer. Microsoft saw that and provided a solution, whereas Netscape went to cry to the feds as opposed to recognize that their business model was flawed and pivot. If you are stubborn not even the feds can save you, and in fact fast forward Microsoft is a company which makes 50B dollar profit/yr and where is Netscape? Also we are back to square one with a monopoly in the browser , only now it's Google and not Microsoft. The consumer thinks Chrome is a better browser so it doesn't matter that Edge is pre-installed, they all download Chrome within the first week of buying a new PC. Google managed to win marketshare on WIndows even though evil Microsoft pre-installed Edge because unlike Netscape they were smart enough to realize what the customer wants (a free and fast browser) instead of going to the feds to cry out of laziness or inability to pivot:

McLaren_Ferrari 5y ago

> Microsoft used their monopoly (> 70% market share) in OS to go for a monopoly in many other things, includind web browser. A monopoly in a market where the price of the product is zero /s . It's incredible to me that people still think Netscape was wronged even though the market has shown for decades now that consumers are not willing to pay for browsers. Consumers want to be able to get on the internet as soon as they start their brand new computer. Microsoft saw that and provided a solution, whereas Netscape went to cry to the feds as opposed to recognize that their business model was flawed and pivot. If you are stubborn not even the feds can save you, and in fact fast forward Microsoft is a company which makes 50B dollar profit/yr and where is Netscape? Also we are back to square one with a monopoly in the browser , only now it's Google and not Microsoft. The consumer thinks Chrome is a better browser so it doesn't matter that Edge is pre-installed, they all download Chrome within the first week of buying a new PC. Google managed to win marketshare on WIndows even though evil Microsoft pre-installed Edge because unlike Netscape they were smart enough to realize what the customer wants (a free and fast browser) instead of going to the feds to cry out of laziness or inability to pivot: