This is nothing like Standard Oil. MS gained its position via consumer choice.
The definition of monopoly attributed to them is only for Intel-compatible PC desktop operating systems. The judge had to severely limit the scope of the market to make the claim that MS had a monopoly, and the claim and supporting findings were and are still flimsy.
If you read many of the findings, they basically say that other companies can't compete because consumers choose to use MS products, or that the competitors' products are mediocre in comparison. In other words, MS suffers because the consumer likes their products best, and the competitors don't do enough to present a credible alternative.
MS does not have absolute power to decide which way a market goes. There are plenty of products they've made that didn't totally beat out their competitors' products, or didn't take off even though they were the sole provider. They still have to find ways of pleasing the consumer with their product more that a competing one, or offer a compelling reason for the consumer to buy into a totally new product. The main thing that has helped MS in markets they've entered is that either there wasn't a competitive threat to begin with, or their competitors didn't take MS' entry into the market seriously. While MS offered new features/usability improvements in that market, the competitor largely remained stagnant, believing that their current 90+% marketshare meant that they knew best what the customer wanted, and that the customer wanted no more that what they provided, especially if that "more" came from MS.
As for preventing innovation, look at Java - .NET, Netscape - IE, Text Editors - Visual Studio, Palm - PocketPC, Mac - Windows, No Office Suite (Seperate products - hundreds of dollars a piece) - MS Office, etc. Many of these items and others were considered "good enough" until the other products came along to push the competition from their "good enough" state to a state of "we need more" or "this should be easier".
This post was edited by n4cer on Monday, January 19, 2004 at 19:23.
|