Today's XKCD: Microsoft (opens in new tab)

Let's see, are there any important markets out there today where a company has a monopoly? Well, there's the tablet market I guess, where Apple has 95% marketshare. But that's merely a $40 billion a year business with a 70% year over year growth rate so it's not really worth considering, right?

And as we all know Apple would never use strong arm tactics like excessive patent litigation to try to hamstring its competitors. And thank goodness that they promote an open platform where anyone can run whatever software they want.

Edit: the 95% figure is a bit out of date, however Apple's revenue marketshare in tablets still remains quite high (around 90% in 2011 and even in 2012).

Edit #2: For reference, when Standard Oil was brought to court on anti-trust charges they had a 70% market share. And US Steel in its heydey only controlled 2/3 of the market.

Agreed, and the bundling of a web browser wasn't the problem, it was the symptom. The problem was that one company had (at the time) near monopolistic power over the mainstream technology revolution. The problem was that Internet Explorer was bundled to combat the idea of Netscape becoming a platform to distribute network applications.

(And you have to give Microsoft credit for taking the threat seriously, because many people would have dismissed the notion in the 1990s. Today there is no doubt. The open platform created by web browsers has already inflicted the greatest damage to Windows' dominance, and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.)

This is silly.

Apple is a monopoly with 100% of the iOS market and use that monopoly to shut any potential competitor out of the market. Can you buy ebooks from Amazon from Kindle app? No. Can you have a true Firefox browser on iOS? No. Can you buy apps directly from developers? No.

What ever Microsoft did in 90s, is nowhere near as bad as Apple today.

This reaction seems a bit too simplistic for me. Assuming that market share + competitive-niceties is the only issue to be evaluated for fairness within capitalism is a rather short-sighted view in the current technology world.

In the 90s (relative to now), Microsoft's scenario involved very specific and identifiable things on which to evaluate the market from an anti-trust point of view. It wasn't just things like 98% of the OS market or browser bundling; these were very concrete things that any person could look at and visibly see. In a fast-growing market without a lot of players, it was easy to see that MSFT was largely the only game in town.

Nowadays it is much more complex. Who cares about OS installations anymore (besides MS Windows division?) Back in the 90s, categories such as search weren't yet a critical part of the mainstream. What about personal data (social networks) or advertising (display/text)? Consider a more granular scenario: when Twitter or Facebook makes an API policy change that forces third-parties who have built upon their API into wholesale business changes, is that anti-competitive? The "low switching costs" that service providers mention isn't quite so cut-and-dried.

It seems to me we could use some evolved thinking on the subject. Continuing to apply the simple metrics used with the MSFT anti-trust evaluation feels outdated.

The only reason Apple has such a big share in tablets is cause they were the ones that got one out there that didn't suck first.

Same with Microsoft. Windows 95 kicked all others asses cause they MADE the PC business. Just like Apple did with tablets and iphones. iphones have since gotten saturated with other products, tablets soon to follow. Just like the computer business in the 90s.

So what exactly constitutes a "market"? And what is the magic "share" below which we should stop worrying? Comcast and AT&T have less than 50% of internet provider market in US, but even that causes all kinds of problems.

98%? Even if you assume this only counts desktop OSs, I think that is an exaggeration...

Apple doesn't allow third party browsers using their own renderers in their iOS devices.

Here is an older example. Apple used to use the popularity of their iPod to get people to use iTunes to buy music. They were very aggressive at preventing people from making compatible drivers. People would try to do so to make the iPod compatible with Linux only to have Apple slightly change the protocol every month with a new iPod OS release.

I don't know why their was no outcry over this.

Wasn't Google accused of forcing Motorola/Verizon to dump SkyHook in favor of their own solution by holding Android hostage? I am not sure what the result was but it seems one could say that's anti-competitive behavior (if the accusations are true) but it probably didn't matter because they didn't have a monopoly at the time.

"[...] their strength in the X market to gain an advantage in the Y market."

Isn't that pretty much Google's business plan?

Apple using their strength in the phone market to gain an advantage in the maps market?

It's funny, because the anti-trust lawsuit revolved entirely around the browser wars and "bundling". However, that law is rather vague bordering on poorly written (many instances of "bundling" are often a benefit to the customer) and was likely misinterpreted besides. Moreover, Microsoft won the browser war as much on releasing an outright better browser in a key time frame when Netscape was having extreme development trouble. Even without the bundling Netscape was at a huge disadvantage.

More so, the truly anti-competitive behavior of Microsoft (where they effectively bribed OEMs to prevent them using other OSes) didn't receive nearly as much attention.

And Fa¢ebook doesn't have the same impact.

¥ahoo! Japan on the other hand does fine in Japan.

The "alt" text reads: Facebook, Apple, and Google all got away with their monopolist power grabs because they don't have any 'S's in their names for critics to snarkily replace with '$'s.

So it is partially about Apple.

Comparing to what Apple is doing right now and what MS is going to do with their WinRT, bundling browser is nothing.