[TazeTSchnitzel]

> Anyone complaining about monopolies today has no idea how bad things actually were in the late 90's to early 00,s. We have more high quality products from more vendors and better interoperability than probably any other time in the history of computing.

In what areas? I see an industry with more and more consolidation. There is no longer the serious competition there once was in the field of office suites or certain kinds of creative software, which is really sad.

[jm4]

When was there competition in the office suite space? In the early 90's? Or the law firms that continued to use a stagnating WordPerfect for way too long after everyone else standardized on MS Office?

I entered computing at a time when there was basically nothing else available. Mac was trash and way past its glory days. Linux was a toy that no one would use seriously. The hardware support was non-existent and if you wanted to get online you often had to go buy a new modem. The other players today didn't exist yet.

It's true there is consolidation, but there are also options which didn't exist at all not too long ago.