Microsoft Today: A Destructive Monopoly

Today, Microsoft's lust for power reaches far beyond an operating system monopoly. Witness their countless recent investments in media companies, their involvement with banks, and their aggressive movement into the Internet. Microsoft is attempting to control our media, commerce, and communications of the future.

Bill Gates will insist that Microsoft is only a software company, with no interest in media, banking or other markets. Several years ago, he made that same contention about the Internet, but today Microsoft claims that integration of the Internet with the rest of its products is a "natural step in software innovation." How can we believe Microsoft now when they claim that they intend to expand no further?

We can't. Microsoft is investing everywhere: Comcast, Hotmail, Real Networks, WebTV, MSNBC, Firefly and the list goes on. Microsoft, although it did not earn its position in the market place, now has the ability to ensure its dominance for years to come simply by investing in every new technology that emerges and leveraging its Windows 95 monopoly and excessive advertising budget to gain share in other markets.

The API (application programming interface) of an operating system is the part of it which determines how application developers write their software. Microsoft has been known to incorporate features into the Windows API without telling other companies, so that they can prevent them from competing by improving their programs in certain ways. Furthermore, Microsoft is notorious for using its "control of the battleground" in which the application wars are fought in order to "break" its competitors' products. Take, for example, the infamous alteration of the "WINSOCK.DLL" file, which controls how programs communicate with the Internet. After installing the Microsoft Network, America Online mysteriously fails to operate correctly, or after installing the Windows Media Player, RealPlayer no longer launches when opening Internet media files.

As if this wasn't enough, Microsoft also uses their operating system monopoly to make consumers take other products, such as their forced bundling of Internet Explorer with Windows. Consumers, having no choice but to purchase Windows because of its monopoly, must also take Internet Explorer.

Microsoft can now prevent virtually any company from achieving an important role in the market place by leveraging its pre-existing monopoly. They are using that monopoly to grow into other markets, and achieve a monopoly of those markets too. What will follow if Microsoft gets its way is that software will become mediocre while carrying a large price tag, every Internet transaction will include a Microsoft tax, and innovation and competition in the computer industry will be non-existent. Microsoft must be stopped.

Next: What can I do?

• Distortion of Truth - Microsoft's Lies
  • A Tale of Two Press Releases
  • How Microsoft Negotiates
  • Microsoft Plans Stealth Blitz to Mend Its Image
  • NEW! Microsoft Witness Admits to Destruction of Evidence
  • NEW! Microsoft's Questionable Research Papers
  • News Media Catch Bill Gates in a Lie
  • Universities of Microsoft, The
• Microsoft's Lust for Power
  • A Microsoft Apology - An Unfortunate Fallacy by ABC
  • Case Against Microsoft, The
  • From MSWord to MSWorld - How Microsoft is Building a Global Monopoly
  • Overdrive - Bill Gates and the Race to Control Cyberspace (book)
  • Whole Microsoft Catalog, The
  • Windows TV: Is it Inevitable?
• Microsoft by Default - Consumer Inaction
  • Against Software Determinism
  • A Modest Manifesto
  • A Tyranny of Standards
  • MS Monopoly
  • Required to buy Microsoft Windows
  • Unbundle Windows Now!
• Quotes on Microsoft's Destructive Monopoly
• Suppresion of Competition and Innovation
  • A Microsoft Monopoly
  • Breaking Up Microsoft Isn't So Hard to Do
  • Dirty Tricks
  • Intel And Microsoft Parallels Abound
  • NEW! It's a Mad, Mad Microsoft-Driven World
  • Leveraging and the Avoidance of Competing on Merit
  • Ma Bell, Meet Ma Bill
  • Making Microsoft Safe for Capitalism
  • Manifest Destiny, Delayed
  • REVISED Microsoft and 3D Graphics - A Case Study in Suppressing Innovation and Competition
  • Microsoft Makes its Move on Java
  • Microsoft vs. Citrix
  • Microsoft's Ambitions and Antitrust Policy
  • NEW! Microsoft Secrets - How the World's Most Powerful Software Company Creates Technology, Shapes Markets, and Manages People (book)
  • Real Reasons for Antitrust
  • Searching for the next Windows NT
  • NEW! Microsoft File, The - The Secret Case Against Bill Gates (book)

Not convinced? - If you're not convinced after reading this, then I invite you to read the comments I've already received and view my responses to them. If you still don't agree, let's talk. And if after talking with me, your opinion hasn't changed, then why not tell the world?

Feel free to distribute with this copyright message attached.

This page has been visited times since February 6, 1998.