> It's not illegal to have a monopoly over your own product and it's not illegal to have a walled garden.
The larger point being made is that once your product has a commanding share of the market, it should be illegal, as it's clearly anticompetitive by that point.
I don't think anyone would be against breaking up M$ a bit. Why wouldn't you want some proper M$ Office alternatives?
Xbox is a bit trickier presumably because of PC gaming and Sony/Nintendo, though considering it's M$ I say fuck it and force them to open it up anyways.
Breaking up Microsoft wouldn't necessarily produce more proper Office alternatives. And we already have multiple alternatives from Apple, Google, and LibreOffice. Those don't have all the same features but they're good enough for basic tasks.
If you accept the argument that companies "with a commanding share of the market" should be forced to open up their products, then you can emulate the antitrust remedy the EU put into place for Microsoft in the Windows client/server market (for example, products like Novell Netware or Samba).
Microsoft was required to open up the algorithms and APIs required to become a Windows Server, Domain Controller, file server, print server, group policy object Server... everything.
That's how Samba on Linux became a completely compatible Windows domain controller. Microsoft was required to share all the information and APIs Samba required.
Do the same thing with Office software. Don't just claim the file formats are open, force the release of the algorithms needed to interpret the data in those files to allow opening modifying and saving changes in a completely compatible manner.
> Microsoft has given up its nine-year fight against antitrust regulators in Europe, saying yesterday that it would not challenge a court judgment from last month and would share technical information with rivals on terms the software giant had long resisted.
European regulators and some software groups in Europe hailed the deal as a breakthrough that should open the door to freer competition, especially in the market for the server software that powers corporate data centers and the Internet.
What specifically do you think is missing in the file format documentation? Several competing products have already implemented it. The algorithms seem pretty simple, at least much simpler than emulating a domain controller.
> Breaking up Microsoft wouldn't necessarily produce more proper Office alternatives.
Oh, it absolutely would.
Break Microsoft into the "Office Apps" and "Office EMail" and "Public Email" pieces and prevent them from talking to one another by backdoor APIs. You will get all manner of competitors popping up once the APIs required to do what is needed are all public.
The biggest problem in competing with Microsoft is the integration. If you force Microsoft, itself, to have to use the same public integration as everybody else, screaming will ensue.
Which backdoor APIs are you referring to? I have done extensive Office scripting and everything you can do through the UI can also be done through the public COM API. I've never found anything missing.
What alternatives for MS Office exist from Apple? Also, I will get lots of hate here: If you are a regular MS Office user, LibreOffice is just terrible. Try to use it for a few weeks... ugh.
Apple gives away Pages, Numbers, and Keynote as free MacOS applications. As for LibreOffice being "terrible", that may be true for some users but it hardly implies that Microsoft has a monopoly on productivity software.
Neither of those have a commanding lead on their respective markets. The videogame market is very competitive (and Xbox isn't even the largest player), and as far as office products go, more people use Google Docs now than Microsoft Word.
I would understand the argument that the office doc file format should be public and understandable, but I don't see an argument that the program itself should be open.
I believe the argument that grandparent comment made was that "once your product has a commanding share of the market, it should be illegal, as it's clearly anticompetitive by that point"
At what level should that commanding share be? Microsoft wasn’t found guilty of anti-competitive behavior because Windows was on 98% of PCs sold, it was because they used that position to ensure that no other businesses could compete. A company owning their product end to end isn’t an issue. It’s using that position to manipulate pricing in a market (the definition of anti-competitive behavior).
The larger point being made is that once your product has a commanding share of the market, it should be illegal, as it's clearly anticompetitive by that point.