[martinced]

You're seriously confused as to what a monopoly is and what a monopoly implies.

There's nothing wrong with having a monopoly. What is, however, illegal is to abuse your monopoly to keep and extend your monopoly to other domains.

Btw Google / Android isn't near anywhere a monopoly in the smartphone / tablet market.

What would be illegal would be, for example, Google using its search engine to eliminate any mention of the word "Apple" and of the "apple.com" domain or, worse, only allowing access to negative criticism of Apple products. But they aren't doing that (at least not that we know of).

On the contrary MS has been officially judged has being a monopolist abusing its power to try to keep and extend its monopoly. Both in an US judgement and in an European judgement.

Heck, even selling the Xbox at a loss for years and years while living on monopoly money is a dubious way to enter a market (but personally I wouldn't mind if MS faded into irrelevancy and had only its Xbox division doing fine ; )

[gjulianm]

Google / Android + Chrome is not a monopoly in the same sense that Windows + Internet Explorer isn't neither. Maybe in other ways MS has abused its position, but not in IE. At least in my opinion.

Why? Because IE was a default browser, all the OS have a default browser. Microsoft didn't prohibited anybody from installing another browser.

If we consider that a monopoly and something punishable, then Android + Chrome is another monopoly. In EU, Android has over 61% market share [1]. And every Android comes with its default browser. And as your parent said, I don't see any ballot screen telling me to choose an alternative browser, but Google doesn't keep you from installing other browsers. Is the exact same situation.

[1] http://www.nasdaq.com/article/apple-raises-market-share-to-5...

[jsnell]

Actually, Microsoft did contractually prohibit OEMs from pre-installing other browsers and making them the default instead.

[gjulianm]

Never heard of that. Source?

[stordoff]

Mainly the US anti-trust case <http://www.justice.gov/atr/cases/f3800/msjudgex.htm>. Example:

> At the same time, Compaq removed the Internet Explorer icon from the desktop of its Presarios and replaced it with a single icon [for Navigator]

>When Microsoft learned of Compaq's plans for the Presario, it informed Compaq that it considered the removal of the MSN and Internet Explorer icons to be a violation of the OPK process by which Compaq had previously agreed to abide. [...] Finally, after months of unsuccessful importunity, Microsoft sent Compaq a letter on May 31, 1996, stating its intention to terminate Compaq's license for Windows 95 if Compaq did not restore the MSN and Internet Explorer icons to their original positions. Compaq's executives opined that their firm could not continue in business for long without a license for Windows, so in June Compaq restored the MSN and IE icons to the Presario desktop.

[toyg]

The whole antitrust case in the States was about that: MS abusing his status to force OEMs not to install another browser.

[brg1007]

As gjulianm stated, Android is a monopoly in EU. So I do not see any valid argument that Android should be punished the same way as Microsoft is/was.

[masklinn]

> As gjulianm stated, Android is a monopoly in EU.

Android is — at best — in a dominant position, but Android also isn't a monolithic entity.

Then comes the second problem: ignoring the non-monolithic nature of Android where e.g. Samsung and HTC — while all using the same base system — compete with one another) being a natural monopoly (or even in a dominant position) is not illegal, abusing such a position to distort other markets is.

If you are an EU citizen and can make such a case, you should feel free to bring it up to EU competition courts. But you have to make the case first.