The road to monopoly

Mark of Doubting to Shuo have some excellent commentary on how Microsoft maintained its stranglehold on the software market, cutting down companies with superior products through illegal anti-competition tactics. Here's Mark:

Capitalism doesn't work without anti-trust laws. It is perfectly reasonable that it is the goal of every company to become a monopoly. However, if a company does succeed and become a monopoly, it must start playing by a stricter set of rules. One of the most important of these rules is NOT to leverage one existing monopoly to create another. The history of Standard Oil, makes this abundantly clear. As such, there are anit-trust laws in every first world country.

Microsoft broke them. They got caught. They settled. They broke their settlement. They got caught again. They lied in court and destroyed evidence. They settled again. They broke the deal again. They got caught again. In the US it’s been an on-going saga for two decades, that finally culminated with a trembly and adgitated Bill Gates on national TV getting caught lying in court.

And here's his chronological timeline of Microsoft's history of crushing competition through unseemly tactics. Worth reading.