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).
>
---------------------------------------------------
PLUG-discuss mailing list -
PLUG-discuss@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us
To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change you mail settings:
http://lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss
(text/plain)