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?
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.
My third-party iOS browser uses its own renderer and they don't seem to have issues with it. However, it is designed for niche cases and does not implement the full W3C spec., so I guess that is what they really have issues with?
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.
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.
Depends who you ask. Milton Friedman argued that capitalism cannot be seperated from freedom as
"[e]conomic arrangements play a dual role in the promotion of a free society. On the one hand, freedom in economic arrangements is itself a component of freedom broadly understood, so economic freedom is an end in itself. In the second place, economic freedom is also an indispensable means toward the achievement of political freedom." [1]
On the other hand, Karl Marx saw capitalism as dividing society into the haves and have nots - the haves being the bourgouise with all the wealth, and the have nots being the proleteriat who had none of the wealth. Marx, obviously, was not a fan.
The XKCD strip is about whether or not it's a good thing to have tech companies with overwhelming amounts of power in certain areas. That's orthogonal to whether or not such behavior is strictly legal.
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.
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.
I remember thinking that was strange. How do you settle an antitrust lawsuit out of court? Ask every consumer ever to agree that 10c is fair for having been prevented from having the option of saying "No OS or GPL OS please, I'll sort it out myself when I get home"? I don't recall getting one red cent, even though I was sold hardware through several vendors who had been bribed to not offer me options. While I'm sure many consumers would still have said "No, I need things installed" I can also see many saying "Nah, I'm not forking up for an OS, I'll run GPL" or "Nah, I'll... No. (pirated CD at the ready back home)".
By the same token, half the crap on a fresh install nowadays doesn't really benefit either although it's hard to say which direction the money is flowing, I suppose if they're charging me less for installing McAffee/ton of ISPs/etc whatever, I'll opt in and remove them. But I still don't have the option or anything..
Comments
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?
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.
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.
I installed Linux on my microwave.
Just kidding. I wish I could though.
My third-party iOS browser uses its own renderer and they don't seem to have issues with it. However, it is designed for niche cases and does not implement the full W3C spec., so I guess that is what they really have issues with?
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?
Except Google doesn't have any monopolies, so it's legal.
Maybe, but that goes to show the definition of monopoly is hazy at the best of times.
It's hazy at the worst of times. At the best of times, it's very obvious, like Microsoft in the late 90s.
Apple using their strength in the phone market to gain an advantage in the maps market?
That is legal for non-monopolies.
Are legality and morality interchangeable?
Is morality a foundation of capitalism?
Depends who you ask. Milton Friedman argued that capitalism cannot be seperated from freedom as
"[e]conomic arrangements play a dual role in the promotion of a free society. On the one hand, freedom in economic arrangements is itself a component of freedom broadly understood, so economic freedom is an end in itself. In the second place, economic freedom is also an indispensable means toward the achievement of political freedom." [1]
On the other hand, Karl Marx saw capitalism as dividing society into the haves and have nots - the haves being the bourgouise with all the wealth, and the have nots being the proleteriat who had none of the wealth. Marx, obviously, was not a fan.
1. https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/ipe/friedman.htm
The XKCD strip is about whether or not it's a good thing to have tech companies with overwhelming amounts of power in certain areas. That's orthogonal to whether or not such behavior is strictly legal.
What advantage do they have 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.
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.
I remember thinking that was strange. How do you settle an antitrust lawsuit out of court? Ask every consumer ever to agree that 10c is fair for having been prevented from having the option of saying "No OS or GPL OS please, I'll sort it out myself when I get home"? I don't recall getting one red cent, even though I was sold hardware through several vendors who had been bribed to not offer me options. While I'm sure many consumers would still have said "No, I need things installed" I can also see many saying "Nah, I'm not forking up for an OS, I'll run GPL" or "Nah, I'll... No. (pirated CD at the ready back home)".
By the same token, half the crap on a fresh install nowadays doesn't really benefit either although it's hard to say which direction the money is flowing, I suppose if they're charging me less for installing McAffee/ton of ISPs/etc whatever, I'll opt in and remove them. But I still don't have the option or anything..