[yjftsjthsd-h]

> In any event it was state intervention. When that happens the victory/defeat of a company becomes political , not technical or due to financial or business acumen.

Microsoft didn't win on technical merit, they were winning because they were aggressively anti-competitive.

[GDC7]

How can you be anti competitive when your software is free?

[MBCook]

It’s called “dumping”.

Give away your product for free. Now it’s practically impossible for your competitors to sell enough to keep going when there’s a free product out there.

That’s EXACTLY what killed Netscape.

[macintux]

That’s practically the definition of being anti-competitive. Leveraging a monopoly to fund other products to destroy the companies that make them.

[GDC7]

Anti trust laws were made to protect consumers, not paper-millionaires shareholders of other compenies.

There wasn't an organic hatred against Microsoft, people were teaching courses on how to create a startup aimed at getting acquired by them and retire early.

It was a DC play from people who knew nothing about software but were jelous of what they were reading on Fortune and Forbes.

[yjftsjthsd-h]

> Anti trust laws were made to protect consumers, not paper-millionaires shareholders of other compenies.

And consumers were harmed by one company controlling 97% of the desktop market, when its would-have-been competitors had better product but couldn't compete because it cheated.

[GDC7]

> And consumers were harmed by one company controlling 97% of the desktop market

When the 97% is potentially all free, then I don't where's the monopoly, unless you also include in the definition of monopoly having a special place in people's hearts after you gave them such gift.

People made a choice to pay for convenience, but if you looked around you'd find ways to get Microsoft products for free.

[MBCook]

But it’s NOT free. You keep repeating that, but I’m not sure why.

Are you saying that because people didn’t have to buy Windows for their computers since it was included?

They paid in directly. You’d buy your computer for $2000 and Microsoft would get $350 (or whatever). Because of the price Microsoft charged, the price of your computer with artificially high. Because of Microsoft agreements with computer makers, you couldn’t choose NOT to buy Windows. So you had to pay the money. Since you had to buy Windows, there was no price competition.

Even after the antitrust settlement this was still a problem. Remember when netbooks were the fad? Well it’s really hard to sell a $500 laptop that’s good if you’re required to pay Microsoft $250 for Windows. That’s why we actually saw ones that shipped with Lenox. In competition, Microsoft released a cut down version of Windows that was limited that they charged less for.

What do you know, competition worked. That couldn’t happen before the settlement.

[yjftsjthsd-h]

By choking out your competitors, since the true cost isn't free. For instance, demanding that OEMs only ship Windows, thus cornering the market, while still charging them (what, you really thought MS was giving their OS away for free, just because the OEM didn't show you the line item?).

[AnimalMuppet]

Microsoft's software wasn't free - except when they were trying to drive someone else out of a market. Even then it often wasn't free.

[fundad]

We all know that they charged the pc manufacturers and forced them to pay a license on computers regardless of what’s preinstalled