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Today's XKCD: Microsoft

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Re: Today's XKCD: Microsoft

#11

Post by InclinedPlane »

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…

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Edit: the 95% figure is a bit out of date, however Apple's revenue marketshare in tablets still remains quite high (around 90% in 2011 and even in 2012).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

Re: Today's XKCD: Microsoft

#13

Post by streptomycin »

InclinedPlane wrote: post #11
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…

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 it's way less than 95%. No monopoly.

Re: Today's XKCD: Microsoft

#14

Post by ps2000 »

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…

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

Re: Today's XKCD: Microsoft

#15

Post by subsystem »

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?

Re: Today's XKCD: Microsoft

#16

Post by antninja »

bruceboughton wrote: post #5
soapdog wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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.

Re: Today's XKCD: Microsoft

#17

Post by loumf »

InclinedPlane wrote: post #11
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…

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…

Amazon has credibly claimed that the Kindle Fire has 20% market share. The Nook also has some not insignificant share. Even adding up the also-rans will probably get 3-5 more percent.

This is important because there is an inflection point where you are not allowed to use your monopoly in other markets -- that might be at 95%, but probably not at 75%.

I am making no judgement on their practices -- just correcting market share and when they may or may not be within the law.

Re: Today's XKCD: Microsoft

#18

Post by streptomycin »

ps2000 wrote: post #14
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…

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.

Re: Today's XKCD: Microsoft

#19

Post by InclinedPlane »

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 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.

Re: Today's XKCD: Microsoft

#20

Post by romaniv »

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.
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