drhowarddrfine - 12:05 pm on Dec 30, 2012 (gmt 0)

@mack, you miss a lot of what that whole story was about. A lot of it centers around Microsoft being a monopoly on the desktop. When you are a monopoly in an industry, you cannot do things that lock out competitors in a market. This is true in almost all countries.

Microsoft did many things to lock out competition by 1) not publishing software API information so competitors could run their well or at all, 2) would not sell Windows to computer manufacturers who included competing software 3) embedded IE into Windows in a way that it could not be removed and forced software to use it when opening certain files and web sites and 4) other things I can't recall at six in the morning.

I'll repeat what I said above because, after that short paragraph, too many people forget: Microsoft has been declared a monopoly on the desktop on two continents and you cannot restrict competitors in a market you monopollize.

The second thing I'll bring up is people inevitably say, "Well Apple does the same thing!" which means they totally ignored what I've said twice. Microsoft is a declared monopoly in the desktop market. Apple is not a monopoly on the desktop.

Then someone else will say "But what about phones!" to which I have to remind them, Apple is not a monopoly in the phone market.