Balmer calls Google a monopoly, demands that they come under greater scrutiny by anitrust authorities

[joeorc]

Alby_da_Wolf said:

ListerOfSmeg said:
There is a bit of a difference. Google use is not forced on anyone. People just choose to go there because of its quality.
Now when you buy a PC, you have no option but Windows as an average consumer. You don't get to actively choose to support MS.

This. Google's leadership depends on users choice, it could fall at any moment like Yahoo and Altavista leaderships fell in the past. Not to mention that Windows and Office monopoly on desktop is actively enforced thanks to legacy apps and closed formats and protocols, and in the past it was even worse, MS arrived to charge PC producers also for PCs sold without Windows. If users instead decide to abandon Google, there aren't closed formats and protocols that lock them to it. BTW, back in the time of the battle between MS Windows and IBM OS/2, MS won also because IBM was still scared by possible antitrust actions, despite not having had a monopoly for years, and so its attacks were very weak, its support to OS/2 not strong enough, while MS was actively building its own monopoly, also with unfair tactics against Digital Research, undisturbed. It was subject to fines and other legal actions later, for its behaviour against others (and always too late to save its competitors), but in the battle against IBM the antitrust actually favoured MS and damaged IBM, despite IBM not being a threat for free competition anymore in the PC market. Is MS trying to be helped again this way?
Other MS unfair actions punished too late or never: not disclosing fully Windows specs and APIs to competing SW houses writing SW for it, it used undisclosed APIs and specs to give MS Office and other SW an unfair competitive advantage on competitors like Lotus/IBM Smartsuite, WordPerfect Suite and others. MS unfair actions against Netscape and Java are well documented, and MS was fined for them, but, as usual, too little and too late.
 

Remember OS2 warp? IBM spenspent all that money and times and resources, and what did Microsoft do? Yeah no one really is crying about a open source search browser dominance really except for a company that has not been able to dominate it like they have done in pretty much every market that the company has ever been in with patent tax on every Linux distro out there, I think crying about one area of an area that with all the resources, that are @ Microsoft they cannot just come in an toll tax them like they have to any and every Is that has a non windows stamp on. Call an IP that is full open source that Microsoft is complaining about is like a very large Armed force that attacks a castle that has a very large moat and than complain about that the defenders are pure defensive to defend themselves. Google's is a Most defense its based n open source people can and will use other means for search. Hell Microsoft spent 20 billion on bing and has now recovered back 8 billion back with bing, so the fact they are making money on bing but complaining about Google is pretty d@men silly.