
The Story of a Great Monopoly (1881) - behoove
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1881/03/the-story-of-a-great-monopoly/306019/
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dredmorbius
Far too much here for easy synopsis. Picking two arbitrary items:

 _The contract is in print by which the Pennsylvania Railroad agreed with the
Standard, under the name of the South Improvement Company, to double the
freights on oil to everybody, but to repay the Standard one dollar for every
barrel of oil it shipped, and one dollar for every barrel any of its
competitors shipped._

Strong shades of Microsoft's per-CPU licensing agreement for PCs.

Or of how to respond to questions under inquiry:

 _When Mr. Vanderbilt was questioned by Mr. Simon Sterne, of the New York
committee, about these and other things, his answers were, “I don’t know,” “I
forget,” “I don’t remember,” to 116 questions out of 249 by actual count._

The names change but the game's the same.

~~~
adventured
> The names change but the game's the same.

It's certainly true. Even though Gates was universally mocked for his
approach, and although it was widely interpreted as making Microsoft look more
guilty, it's exactly how Zuckerberg and Larry Page will respond when their
embryonic anti-trust parties get to that point. Their lawyers will advise that
that approach is still the safest way to go, despite how it will look. When in
doubt, play dumb.

~~~
dredmorbius
I actually had both general recent testimony and Reagan-era inquiries. The
pattern is rather older, it seems.

