I stand corrected.
/sits back down and crawls to a dark corner...

--- Joseph Sinclair <plug-discuss@stcaz.net> wrote:

> MS is a monopoly.  Monopoly is more broadly defined
> (for anti-trust purposes) as any single entity that,
> by virtue of it's excessive (not necessarily
> exclusive) control of a market or market segment, is
> able to compete without regard to
> it's competitors, if any. It is not actually illegal
> to become a monopoly.  Microsoft was declared a
> monopoly, but that was a supporting point in it's
> conviction for monopolizing (using monopoly power in
> one industry to restrain trade in another
> industry).
> 
> Natural monopolies are what you refer to with
> respect to utilities.  They are most definitely
> monopolies, they're just state-regulated "natural"
> monopolies, so they're allowed to bypass a lot of
> anti-trust law in return for state control
> of their profits, pricing, and other aspects of
> their business.  Cable companies are able to engage
> in some of the most egregious monopoly abuses since
> the 1930's simply because they are currently
> protected as "natural" monopolies
> and the states haven't yet realized that this is no
> longer in the best interests of the public.
> 
> There's nothing inherently wrong with becoming a
> monopoly if you do so by way of fair competition. 
> What's illegal and wrong is taking action to
> restrict, restrain, or avoid competition, whether
> you're a monopoly or not.  Even if a
> company is not a monopoly, it may run afoul of
> anti-trust law by engaging in any business
> transaction that has the effect of substantially
> reducing competition, such as a merger between a
> limited number of competitors in a market
> (i.e. if Microsoft and Oracle wanted to merge,
> they'd be stopped because that would severely harm
> competition in enterprise databases by consolidating
> roughly 80% market share in one company).
> 
> In Windows 2000 and XP, you would have to remove or
> damage shdocvw.dll in order to remove IE, and doing
> so would break Office, Outlook, Explorer, help, and
> a vast array of other applications.  The desktop in
> Windows is
> actually rendered by the DLL that implements IE, and
> removal is not actually possible. It is possible to
> remove and/or limit the IE interface, but since the
> interface does almost nothing, it doesn't improve
> the security of your
> system either, and the core of IE is still present
> and still poses an anti-competitive threat.
> 
> ==Joseph++
> 
> P.S. An oligopoly is a group of companies, no single
> company can be an oligopoly.  An oligopoly is found
> where the market is such that companies are unable
> to compete solely on price, usually due to high
> consumer awareness, limited market,
> or inherent pricing characteristics.  The Aluminum
> industry is an oligopoly, the new car market may
> also be an oligopoly.  Oligopolies are not
> characterized by a lack of competition, rather by
> competition on non-price factors, such as
> corporate image, product appearance, marketing
> skill, or physical location.  The Cola market (if we
> only look at Coke and Pepsi) is another example of
> an oligopoly (they compete almost entirely on taste,
> not price).
> Oligopolies encounter legal challenges when the
> competing companies start agreeing with each other
> in ways that restrain free trade (price-fixing,
> market division, boundary setting, etc...), even if
> those agreements are informal.
> 
> Josh Coffman wrote:
> > 
> > I never ran into any of those IE-linked apps, but
> I
> > can see how, as a programmer, that might be.
> (Using a
> > path to launch the browser instead of the system
> > default setting. generally a bad progamming to do
> > that.)
> > 
> > I also never bought into that monopoly thing... MS
> > isn't a monopoly; it is(was?) an oligopoly. I'm
> not
> > sure if that's the right word, but basically a
> seller
> > or group of sellers that have such a large portion
> of
> > the market that thay basically have a strangle
> hold of
> > potential buyers. Like a monopoly, but not an
> absence
> > of choices. Problem for the MS-is-monopoly crowd
> is
> > that an oligopoly isn't illegal. Otherwise, the
> > utility companies would also be in violation.
> > 
> > I recall reading some how-to to really remove IE,
> but
> > I figured it was more work than I cared for. and,
> if I
> > wanted, there is a certain dll that could be
> altered
> > or removed to criple IE (and possibly IP sockets).
> > 
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