[justin66]

Hopefully you realize that a lot of people (in the US and elsewhere) actually felt that way, and that simply posting this does not constitute a very thoughtful rebuttal.

The application of antitrust law (in the US and elsewhere) tends to be rather controversial. Which is why it's interesting...

[yladiz]

I know, my implicit argument is that this specific argument isn't really valid because these circumstances have happened before and I don't believe the decision against Microsoft is controversial in 2017. I do believe that something like Google, while obviously having alternatives, is often the place people search, so it is in many ways a monopoly and should be heavily scrutinized to ensure it's not using its position for its own gain at the expense of its competitors. I don't know anyone who really uses Bing, and I only use DuckDuckGo because I don't prefer to be in the Google ecosystem, but I am not most people.

[justin66]

> I don't believe the decision against Microsoft is controversial in 2017.

Well, in one sense that's obviously true: it's no longer a source of controversy. On the other hand, if there is a reason you believe the people who argued against the Microsoft antitrust action - or aspects thereof - in the late nineties would retract their opposition today, I wonder what it is. More to the point, I wonder if you have read any legal scholarship or punditry to the effect of "I was wrong, the Microsoft antitrust case was correctly decided." I don't recall ever seeing anything like that, and I'm interested in this stuff.

(plenty of us thought bundling IE was not an abuse of monopoly power twenty years ago, and still feel that way today)

[kinkrtyavimoodh]

Add my name to the list of people that aren't entirely convinced that bundling IE was a abuse of monopoly power.