Yeah, I'm breaking a cardinal rule by top posting, but what Christopher Williams has to say here are the wisest words spoken in this thread. I think they bear repeating, and re-reading. On 3/19/06, Christopher A. Williams <chrisw01@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > In reality, when any company dominates in a market (because of the > Standard Oil suits from the early 1900's, the threshold is usually set > at around 60% market share), they are considered to have monopoly power > in that market. Such companies are then referred to as de-facto > monopolies or just monopolies. See Wikipedia's definition > (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly) for more info. Quoting directly > from it (for those who prefer to read it here): > > "Industries which are dominated by a single firm may allow the firm to > act as a near-monopoly or "de facto monopoly", a practice known in > economics as monopolistic competition. Common historical examples > arguably include corporations such as Microsoft and Standard Oil > (Standard's market share of refining was 64% in competition with over > 100 other refiners at the time of the trial that resulted in the > government-forced breakup)." > > With 90% plus market share in the desktop OS market, Microsoft most > certainly qualifies, and was legally defined as a monopoly as a finding > of fact in the DOJ case. They also exhibit the behaviors typical of > monopolies of this type. In addition, Microsoft was found liable under > US anti-trust laws of abusing their monopoly power (again, another > finding of fact in the case). > > To be clear, it's not illegal to have monopoly power in a market, but > anti-trust laws are very specific in that, if you have such power in a > market, you are not allowed to engage in certain practices that you > otherwise might be able to do. This includes things like selling your > product below its marginal cost to keep competitors from entering the > market, raising the barriers to entry into the market through things > like predatory pricing (ex. Microsoft's per system licensing scheme for > HW vendors that essentially raised the price of competing operating > systems by the price of the Windows license) and leveraging monopoly > power in one defined market to gain control in a second market. > Microsoft's bundling of IE with Windows to kill off Netscape is a > classic example here. In plain US English, even the trade magazines use > the vernacular that Microsoft was "convicted" of being an abusive > monopoly. You are indeed splitting hairs, and when confronted with this > in a question, prefer to answer the question with other questions. This > is a clear sign that you are unable to support your notion fully and > your tactics would cause you to lose in debate class. -- Chris "I trust the Democrats to take away my money, which I can afford. I trust the Republicans to take away my freedom, which I cannot."
