I wish that Gates had told Clinton's DOJ to go straight to hell back in the 90's when our own government was attacking one of our most successful companies. MSFT held the cards, but Gates wussed out. A little Atlas Shrugged style non compliance would have gone a long way in restoring true free enterprise to our economy., IMO..
Personally, I think MSFT had it coming. But the case was about the wrong thing.
Back around the same time (maybe a little before or after), DOJ went after Walmart pharmacies for selling drugs at below cost, with the intent of driving out competition after which, of course, they could charge what they wanted -- a clear case of predatory pricing.
MSFT did precisely the same thing, when it gave away copies of Excel and Word with OEM distributions of Windows. Borland, at the time, had vastly superior competing products (particularly, Quattro Pro, which was far better), but there was no way they could sell the product when MSFT was giving it away. Totally predatory, and it had the intended result.
MSFT could have been beaten on this, IMO, and I'll never know why they weren't taken to court over it.
There is a place for antitrust regulation. Unfortunately, it is applied very inconsistently depending on who is in office at the time. |
