I’m a little confused over what the government considers a monopoly. I know much of Microsofts problems had to do with it’s business practices. But what about a company who receives all of the publics business without bad business practices? Is that illegal too?
Example: I make Widgets. My widgets are so good that nobody buys widgets from my competitors. 100% of all widgets sold are from my company, simply because they are the best. Does that make me a monopoly? Does the government try to bust me up? What if I’m the only company making widgets, others just don’t bother to get into the business. Am I a monopoly then? At what point do the feds say “We gotta stop this guy”?
I believe being a monopoly is not a crime. What is a crime is to do certain things that restrict competition and that is what MS has been accused of doing.
I disagree again sailor, but it’s semantics again. By definition, a monopoly has monopolized a product or products by methods fair (buying the competition) and foul (MS). Being a ‘sole source’ for a specialized product is not a crime.
If you’re interested, the case (or at least, the most famous case) in which the Supreme Court ruled that being a monopoly wasn’t against the law was the USFL vs the NFL.
Where do you get your definitions? A monopoly in my book can not even be legal, it can be mandated by law (witness the USPS), so your definition is waaay off.
IBM in the 70s a similar case and in the verdict it was established that the mere fact that you have coped the market is not illegal, what would be illegal are certain actions that tend to restrict the competition.
Oh yes, I just like to take the minority opinion and see how far it goes. That’s why my first post is always a disagreement.
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Well, when an approved definition doesn’t suit, I make one up that fits my needs. I am practicing to join organized religion.
Are you in this board because you like to debate, or because you like to be right? I try to be right whenever possible, but not at the expense of entertainment.
I am a student of the DOPELER EFFECT - The tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when they come at you rapidly.
IANAL. But my dad is. Anyhoo, being the sole source of a product (yes, that is a monopoly) is not against the law. What is against the law is if you abuse the monopoly status in order to prevent people from introducing competition into the market.
Antitrust cases are based on a concept called “relevant market.” In the MS case, many people said, “Sure, they have a dominant market share, but there are plenty of other companies making operating systems and software.” Thus, the judge has to decide whether or not the “competitors” (MS named Apple, RedHat, Be, OSF and others) are in the relevent market. One test is:
If MS raised its prices considerably, would consumers switch to other products to save money?
Because of MS’s finagling, the answer is most certainly “No.” in most cases. It would just be too much of a pain in the ass to switch from MS products to other products. So, yes, MS has used its monopoly powers to do nastiness…thus the Antitrust case.
I was going to stay out of the argument over the definition of the word “monopoly” but my brain kept telling me I read something qbout it recently so I scrounged around the news site looking at the Microsoft trial coverage (the most likely place I saw it) and I found it.
The Supreme Court said in United States v. Grinnell Corp., 384 U.S. 563, 570-71 (1966)–
That is to say, that by itself, being a monopoly isn’t against the law. At least the Supreme Court uses the terminology that way. So does Thomas Penfield Jackson in his finding of fact, ruling of law, and order to break up Microsoft in this case.
