[adventured]

Large companies always use the government - when they can - to kneecap their competition. It's the very rare exception of a corporation that won't stoop to that level of behavior. There's practically an unlimited number of excuses a company can come up with to rationalize proceeding (with using the government as a leveling club).

It's exactly what many of Microsoft's peers did in the 1990s. They waged a large, persistent campaign across years to convince the government to pursue and break up Microsoft. Larry Ellison went so far as to basically purchase trash from a cleaning company to get at info related to lobbyists supporting Microsoft's position.[1] Some of it was spot on, Microsoft was doing what they claimed; some of it was nothing more than ugly, base envy, jealousy, greed.

[1] https://www.newsweek.com/diving-bills-trash-161599

[logicprog]

Exactly. I've always had an issue with the whole incident where everyone went after Microsoft.