Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Today's XKCD: Microsoft

xkcd.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 64 posts

Re: Today's XKCD: Microsoft

#21

Post by streptomycin »

InclinedPlane wrote: post #19
pif wrote: post #2

As far as I understand, the problem with MS was that they tried and used their strength in the OS market to gain an advantage in the browser market. What similar cross-market unfair competition are Facebook, Google and Apple blamed for?

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 developmen…

There was an antitrust lawsuit from Be about the OEM shit, but it was settled out of court for only $23 million without MS admitting any wrongdoing http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/84708/Microsoft_Be_re... likely because Be was near dead by that point.

Re: Today's XKCD: Microsoft

#22

Post by streptomycin »

subsystem wrote: post #15
pif wrote: post #2

As far as I understand, the problem with MS was that they tried and used their strength in the OS market to gain an advantage in the browser market. What similar cross-market unfair competition are Facebook, Google and Apple blamed for?

"[...] their strength in the X market to gain an advantage in the Y market." Isn't that pretty much Google's business plan?

Except Google doesn't have any monopolies, so it's legal.

Re: Today's XKCD: Microsoft

#23

Post by sujal »

antninja wrote: post #16
bruceboughton wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don't have a monopoly to abuse.

They have a local monopoly on their hardware. It's like cable companies: there may be several of them in a country but if there's only one in each city, they have a local monopoly that they can abuse.

Your individual hardware is not like a city. Poor analogy.

This is like saying that your microwave manufacturer has a monopoly on your microwave. Just buy another microwave.

Re: Today's XKCD: Microsoft

#25

Post by streptomycin »

romaniv wrote: post #20
streptomycin wrote: post #7

This is silly. Microsoft was a monopoly with 98% of the OS market who was trying to use that monopoly to force their competitors out of business. Remind me again, what company am I supposed to believe is doing that today? Near 100% market share and uncompetitive practices? This comic seems like the opposite of http://xkcd.com/774/ - it's trendy to ignore the abuses of Microsoft in the 90s, or to paint some false equi…

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.

I was thinking mainly about software companies, as per the examples given in the XKCD hover text. Physical service providers like ISPs are a bit trickier to consider, as it is possible for a company with only 1% of the national market share to be a monopoly in a particular region. That's the problem with ISPs, local monopolies in some places.

Re: Today's XKCD: Microsoft

#26

Post by ps2000 »

streptomycin wrote: post #18
ps2000 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I'm not sure what the best data source is, but http://jeremyreimer.com/postman/node/329 puts it up around 98% in the late 90s-mid 00s.

If I didn't overlook something it only states something about hardware market shares. Which are much easier to measure than software market share. (Although even in the hw market shares there might be a significant uncertainty due to DYI built computers which were quite common during the 90s.)

Re: Today's XKCD: Microsoft

#28

Post by heyitsnick »

streptomycin wrote: post #13
InclinedPlane wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 competi…

95% market share? Where are you getting that from? This says 65%: http://www.bgr.com/2012/08/14/ipad-market-share-all-time-hig... This says 52%: http://www.forbes.com/sites/larrymagid/2012/10/02/android-co... Try again? Also, even if it was 95%, there are clearly competitors with momentum, and you could probably argue that the tablet market isn't really distinct from the smartphone market. But really, it seems like i…

> But really, it seems like it's way less than 95%. No monopoly.

Although there are no hard and fast rules, to be considered a Monopoly in the UK, for example, you only need to have a minimum 25% market share. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly

Re: Today's XKCD: Microsoft

#29

Post by streptomycin »

heyitsnick wrote: post #28
streptomycin wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

95% market share? Where are you getting that from? This says 65%: http://www.bgr.com/2012/08/14/ipad-market-share-all-time-hig... This says 52%: http://www.forbes.com/sites/larrymagid/2012/10/02/android-co... Try again? Also, even if it was 95%, there are clearly competitors with momentum, and you could probably argue that the tablet market isn't really distinct from the smartphone market. But really, it seems like i…

> But really, it seems like it's way less than 95%. No monopoly. Although there are no hard and fast rules, to be considered a Monopoly in the UK, for example, you only need to have a minimum 25% market share. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly

That seems like a strange definition. I guess both Apple and Google have monopolies in the tablet market, then, by the UK definition. Although that obviously seems contradictory.

I'm going by the typical colloquial definition (which might be closer to the real definition outside the UK), that a monopoly is when there's basically just one option and that market dominance can be used to harm competitors and consumers.

Re: Today's XKCD: Microsoft

#30

Post by sjwright »

streptomycin wrote: post #7

This is silly. Microsoft was a monopoly with 98% of the OS market who was trying to use that monopoly to force their competitors out of business. Remind me again, what company am I supposed to believe is doing that today? Near 100% market share and uncompetitive practices? This comic seems like the opposite of http://xkcd.com/774/ - it's trendy to ignore the abuses of Microsoft in the 90s, or to paint some false equi…

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.)

Post reply on HN