[sofixa]

> don't understand how this is any way monopolistic

It's oligopolistic, you have a virtually integrated behemoth across multiple sectors that is too big to fail, which is not good for competition and thus for consumers.

> If anything, this just makes Microsoft into more of a conglomerate: something we should be encouraging and is good for a society!

Is this sarcasm I'm missing? There's nothing wrong with conglomerates, but enormous vertically integrated with exclusivity ones aren't good for society.

[Godel_unicode]

What market does Microsoft operate in where there aren’t strong competitors? Google docs, AWS, PlayStation and Nintendo, Zoom, Chromebooks, Postgres/Oracle, Splunk/McAfee. If Microsoft exited any of those markets the competition would soak up the market share and keep right on going.

Doesn’t sound too-big-to-fail to me. Big on it’s own isn’t necessarily bad.

[sofixa]

The only reason the majority of Microsoft's product still exist is the company behind them. E.g. Azure, Microsoft Teams are objectively extremely poor products with tons of drawbacks compared to any of their competitors, and would never survive on their own - their only "advantage" is that they come from a known brand enterprises already have relationships with, so it's "easy". So legitimate competitors lose market share to a poor cross-subsidised product propped up by Microsoft's cash. This is not good for the competition nor the consumers (be they business or consumer).