
Today's XKCD: Microsoft - robert_nsu
http://xkcd.com/1118
======
streptomycin
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 equivalency
that allows you to just ignore stuff.

~~~
InclinedPlane
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Edit: the 95% figure is a bit out of date, however Apple's revenue marketshare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.

~~~
streptomycin
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...](http://www.bgr.com/2012/08/14/ipad-market-share-all-time-high/)

This says 52%: [http://www.forbes.com/sites/larrymagid/2012/10/02/android-
co...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/larrymagid/2012/10/02/android-could-soon-
overtake-apple-in-tablet-market/)

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.

~~~
heyitsnick
> 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>

~~~
streptomycin
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.

~~~
SEMW
25% market share isn't 'the definition' of a monopoly in the UK, as far as I'm
aware (IANAL or in any way an expert in this).

It's one of the necessary (but not sufficient) conditions for the OFT to refer
a merger to the Competition Commission for investigation under the Enterprise
Act[1], if the result would have greater than 25% market share. The other main
conditions being that it believes the result would be "a lessening of
competition", that it's an important market, etc. That doesn't suddenly make
every company with >25% market share a monopoly.

The nearest I can find for the definition of a monopoly, for the purposes of
investigating a company on its own (rather than a merger) is "a dominant
position in a market"[2], the wording imported from Article 102 TFEU[3].

[1] <http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2002/40>

[2] <http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1998/41>

[3]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_102_of_the_Treaty_on_th...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_102_of_the_Treaty_on_the_Functioning_of_the_European_Union)

------
daliusd
Now I see why companies mentioned in hover text have minor problems in Europe:
Fac€book, Googl€, Appl€...

~~~
chrisdroukas
And Fa¢ebook doesn't have the same impact.

~~~
sjwright
Maybe, but they are making their money through billions of tiny transactions
(advertising) so perhaps it's apt.

------
pif
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?

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

~~~
bruceboughton
They don't have a monopoly to abuse.

~~~
antninja
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.

~~~
sujal
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.

~~~
sjwright
I installed Linux on my microwave.

Just kidding. I wish I could though.

------
adjwilli
Why does everyone think this is about Apple? It's possible the comic is
referring to Google's monopoly of web searches.

My guess would be he's criticizing "monopoly as dangerous" accusations in
general as silly since Microsoft has fallen so far. But that's kind of a poor
argument since Microsoft was punished for monopolistic practices, both de jure
and de facto.

This really isn't XKCD's best comic and it's not even funny.

~~~
Digit-Al
The "alt" text reads: Facebook, Apple, and Google all got away with their
monopolist power grabs because they don't have any 'S's in their names for
critics to snarkily replace with '$'s.

So it is partially about Apple.

------
chrismorgan
Hooray for Mozilla! Fighting the fight again, this time against a competitor
that wouldn't even have been there but for Mozilla's success.

[To be more explicit: that is WebKit on mobile devices.]

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DonnyV
At the time it made sense to go after Microsoft for bundling because the PC
was the only gateway to the internet. Now almost every device has access to
the internet, so its a much even playing field.

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nullsub
the discussion here is weird. isn't this obviously about the across-the-board
practice of bundling browsers with OSes, which is the rule in mobile OS and is
culminating in Chrome OS?

