NJ5 said:
Jereel Hunter said:
NJ5 said:
Let me put it this way. Remember when Nintendo had a monopoly of the handheld gaming market?
What would happen if Nintendo had bundled a "free" Nintendo 64 with each gameboy that they sold... That would practically give them domination of the console market by extension. It would be anti-competitive behavior too, and I'm sure that Sony and Sega would have made a lot of noise back then.
The situation with the browsers is analogous... the only difference is a browser is cheaper to make and distribute than a console, so it's easier for MS to pull off this trick.
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That's not a valid analogy. What would make it a valid analogy would be if someone could turn on that free N64, and use it to order a free Sega or Sony system. And that scenario, while guaranteeing Ninentdo dominance, would have been all aces for the comsumer. Just like the free IE can be used to DL firefox or Chrome.
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OK I think that's taking the analogy too far and it breaks. The core of the issue is Microsoft using its OS dominance to attempt browser dominance (and sooner or later probably to attempt search engine dominance as well).
The US antitrust regulators have also been on MS's ass for the same exact thing before:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft
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No see, the analogy was broken to begin with. Microsoft is giving away something free in a market where all options are free. They are just able to have 100% coverage, which is considered unfair.
As for the US antitrust issues, in the end, the only thing they were required to do was give others access to the OS-APIs that MS has always had access to. (I would agree that this was very anti-competitive) They realized, however, that there wasn't a legal basis for restricting the bundling MS does.
