Word: marketeers
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...company is Microsoft, the country is the United States, and the clash of visions pits social planner against the market system. In May 1998, twenty states charged Microsoft with monopolistic foul play. The thematic centerpiece of their suit--with multiple spin-off charges--was that Microsoft leveraged its power in the operating systems market to aggressively increase the market share of its browser, Internet Explorer. Round One opened in District Court, the honorable Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson presiding. It closed to the brazen bell of his finding of fact on Halloween. The date was eerily appropriate for the 207-page...
...monopoly per se and Sherman took great pains to point that out before Congress when debating the issue. Monopolies attained through continued innovation are totally legitimate. The law targets only those extended through predatory pricing, superfluous tie-ins and a handful of other shady practices that rely not on market merit but market power. Such monopolies invariably hurt the consumer, either by raising prices above the market level or destroying competition that could have otherwise flourished...
...pity His Majesty didn't look a little longer. When Windows 3.0 first came out in April 1990, a copy went for $205. The initial price of Windows 98, on the other hand, was only $169. Lowering cost to the consumer, it seems, just doesn't correlate with market virtue anymore. Although, in all fairness to Jackson, we are talking about only an 18 percent reduction...
...Microsoft resorted to "predatory" behavior in an attempt to log competitors out of the market? One would think so, especially since the crux of His Majesty's edict is that "Microsoft effectively eliminated Netscape as a platform threat." But the charge holds up only in virtual reality, at best. Netscape still enjoys a comfortable 42 percent of the browser market and that figure will increase to a snugly hegemonic 58 percent after its acquisition by AOL is complete. Then again, Jackson's understanding of the word "eliminate" could just be more rich and nuanced than Webster...
Well, what about bundling Explorer with Windows in a blatant attempt to leverage operating system power over into the browser market? According to an appeals court, which in 1998 overturned Jackson's own injunction against the bundle, Microsoft's tying "combines functionalities ... in a way that offers advantages unavailable if ... [the products are] bought separately and combined by the purchaser." The appeals court is higher up on the judicial food chain than Jackson's district court and it did have three judges examine the issue, as opposed to only one. But that was last year. His egregiously embarrassing computer literacy...