Mxsmanic wrote:

John Doe writes:

But seriously. Microsoft was known to hold monopoly power over
the personal computer operating system market long before our
courts finalized the issue.

The courts didn't finalize anything, except in a restricted legal
sense, and there was no general consensus on such questions before
or after the courts gave their opinions.

That makes sense, coming from someone who plainly states that
Microsoft Office is a single application. Methinks someone has been
reading too much Steve Ballmer.

The rest of the world knows better.


Intel has a comparable market share (currently around 81%, vs. 94%
for Microsoft in the desktop OS arena), and yet it does not appear
to raise so many questions of monopoly.

Market share by itself does not indicate monopoly power.

Nothing prevents me from buying an AMD processor which will run all
of the applications and Intel processor runs. And that's what I do.

There is no barrier to entry. Advanced Micro Devices is making a
profit competing with Intel.

We've agreed that multiple operating system makers would be
unacceptable (assuming they could not run the same programs). The
fact that multiple CPU makers is perfectly acceptable to consumers
should give you a clue about another reason why Intel does not hold
monopoly power.