> Just take the OpenAI / Microsoft deal as an example. If a $10B investment into a company comes with strings attached, say with board seats and an exclusivity

> Just take the OpenAI / Microsoft deal as an example. If a $10B investment into a company comes with strings attached, say with board seats and an exclusivity deal to use Azure products, they just blocked out any other hosting service that could compete. If that is legally questionable but they can invest most of the capital as credits for Azure products, they've effectively done the same thing without it clearly being coercion. Microsoft invested in OpenAI and OpenAI has become a huge success. That's all to it. They offered them a deal with azure credits, profits etc. and OpenAI succeeded. They could have failed and doubt anybody would be concerned about MSFT's deal with OpenAI...It is not like Microsoft forced OpenAI's hand there - they could have gone to Amazon. > For a new OS, Microsoft this spent decades building an ecosystem and marketshare in the enterprise space. MS could pretty easily make sure none of their services work on the new OS. They wouldn't be fully blocking the new OS out but it would make it an extremely difficult challenge. They could but they won't due to their high market share and public outrage. That's the whole point. If Microsoft tried to ask for 30% from any Windows app installation then would be in a huge legal trouble immediately. Hell, even bundling Windows Media Player led to some fines...I can have any store on Windows and I don't need to pay Microsoft a thing but if MSFT will try to use Windows API to make Steam work worse than Windows Store, that would cause legal trouble for them. > My understanding is that part of the OpenAI investment was in Azure credits. That may technically be legal, but it blocks any competition in the space and defers paying taxes on the value of those credits. But here is the thing - OpenAI went to Microsoft and agreed to that deal. They could have gone to AWS or GCP.