On Fri, 11 Dec 2009, Edward Ned Harvey wrote: > It's not illegal to have a monopoly. But it is possible to abuse power in > that position, and legal action and correction have already taken place in > the case of MS and their monopoly. > > Over ten years ago, Microsoft was sued for bundling a browser with Windows > 98. Does it amuse anyone else that Google is bundling an operating system > along with their browser? ;-) (Quote I got somewhere online, at > techcrunch)
the difference is that Microsoft is a monopoly and was (and still is) using that monopoly to kill competing products. Google browser is not a monopoly (and their browser is available on different operating systems) It's not illegal to be a monopoly, it's not illegal to give something available for free. What _is_ illegal is to use the fact that you are a monopoly in one area to take control of other fields. What Microsoft has done repeatedly is to use the fact that they are a monopoly on the desktop to kill off competitors. It can be a tricky balancing act between allowing the monopolist to continue to improve their product and avoiding having those improvements kill off competing products. There is no guarantee that just because you sell a useful product now that other companies are not allowed to make your product obsolete. So there was nothing at all wrong with Microsoft creating their own browser. What was (and is) wrong was the shift from charging for the browser to including it for free. Now that competing browsers are available for free as well they can avoid this problem by shipping multiple browsers and givng the user the ability to choose between them (which is what the EU is forcing them to do) There would be nothing at all wrong with Microsoft improving the security of their products to the point where anti-virus software is no longer needed. It is wrong (or at the very least, highly questionable) for Microsoft to create their own anti-virus software and include it for free with the OS. If the OS market was like the Linux disto market, where there are many competitors and none of them are a monopoly there would be nothing wrong with any of them developing something new and shipping it with their version. and no, they would not have to legally open source the thing, allow their competitors to ship it, or even make it available for free download. Market preasure can and (and has) regulated this. The Unix marketplace did this extensivly and perfectly legally (unfortunantly this is one of the things that allowed Microsoft to move in, which is why the Linux distros are avoiding doing this). Even in the Linux marketplace, Disto Boxed Sets have included non-free components, and many Enterprise Distros include some things that require per-installation licenses and fees (not just the support). The market is discouraging doing this with core components. David Lang _______________________________________________ Tech mailing list [email protected] http://lopsa.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tech This list provided by the League of Professional System Administrators http://lopsa.org/
