[ximeng]

Standard oil? Microsoft? At a high level government and big business are very similar in scope. It's not a matter of one or the other - your analysis is too simple. Government created the baby bells, not creative destruction. Government circumscribed ms.

[icebraining]

Standard Oil was never a monopoly, and even its 90% market share had already dropped to 70% two years later when the government even filed charged, and even more when the case was decided.

Microsoft's market position is inseparable from its support by government in the form of software patents. When their rent on Android phones is larger than their income from their own phones, and that rent is purely based on having a patent on an obsolete filesystem which is only useful because it was previously "the standard" (ie., imposed by them), the government is directly helping Microsoft take advantage from their dominant market position in other markets - exactly what they purpose to ban.

[nl]

Microsoft was monopolistic in the 1990's, where they exploited their Windows monopoly to the expense of Netscape. That wasn't patents, it was market dominance.

(Not a fan of patents, but that wasn't the problem back then).

[icebraining]

The claim I was supporting was "there are no examples of monopolies lasting more than a few years unless they have overt support from the state", not that no company ever gains an overwhelming market share. Yes, IE was once at the very top. And a few years later, it wasn't, thanks to competition.

Meanwhile, the government lawsuit not only did nothing to curb their position (IE kept rising at the same rate), as it gave Microsoft "a special antitrust immunity to license Windows and other 'platform software' under contractual terms that destroy freedom of competition."[1]

[1] http://www.unclaw.com/chin/scholarship/nando.pdf