United States Microsoft antitrust case - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Judge Jackson issued his findings of fact[11] on November 5, 1999, which stated that Microsoft's dominance of the personal computer operating systems market constituted a monopoly, and that Microsoft had taken actions to crush threats to the monopoly, including Apple, Java, Netscape, Lotus Notes, Real Networks, Linux, and others. Then on April 3, 2000, he issued a two-part ruling: his conclusions of law were that Microsoft had committed monopolization, attempted monopolization, and tying in violation of Sections 1 and 2 of the Sherman Act, and his remedy was that Microsoft must be broken into two separate units, one to produce the operating system, and one to produce other software components.
The DOJ announced on September 6, 2001 that it was no longer seeking to break up Microsoft and would instead seek a lesser antitrust penalty.
The DoJ won the case and then dropped it as a wet towel. But the drop came after an election changed the power in the white house. I have always assumed Microsoft to be a big donor to the Bush campaign. A vote for PES is a vote for EPP! A vote for EPP is a vote for PES! Support the coalition, vote EPP-PES in 2009!
I would argue that even the first ruling didn't go far enough. M$ would still have the next best thing to a monopoly with their OS (at the time). Which means that they were for all intents and purposes able to control what the users could do with their computers, because there wasn't (and isn't) any effective enforcement of open software standards. That's too much power in the hands of a private company.
But we are getting rather far afield, methinks.
- Jake If you only spend 20 minutes of the rest of your life on economics, go spend them here.
So the horse is already bolted, which's door locking we were discussing. Der Amerikaner ist die Orchidee unter den MenschenVolker Pispers
Divestiture is the only thing which could help, in both cases. Der Amerikaner ist die Orchidee unter den MenschenVolker Pispers
However, I think you underestimate the impact that a wealth tax would have solely by making sure that even the richest person in society is dependent on the same police, fire service, hospitals and universities as everyone else. If the rich have to live next door to the poor, they have a vested interest in making sure that the poor don't live in a slum.
