From: DaveHowe at cmn.sharp-uk.co.uk (Dave Howe)
Subject: OT: Hamilton v. Microsoft lawsuit complaint is now online

> Jeroen Massar [mailto:jeroen@...ix.org] wrote:
> Quite offtopic. But what I still wonder is why the heck one
> isn't allowed to do business and become large. Is it all
> jealousy? If they where so bad why do they get the revenue
> and not your company producing super duper software?
Its not quite that bad (although the way the US government tends to bend
the rules in favour of big political contributors is well known, and
leaning the other way a bit just restores balance).
Once a company gets more than a certain amount of market share, it has the
ability to influence that market (and related markets) simply because you
*must* use their products to interact with other users - IF (and only if)
they can prevent other manufacturers in the same market from interacting
cleanly and/or keep changing their "standards" so competitors gain a
tarnish of "if you go with them, you will have to wait for a few weeks
every time the standard changes while they catch up, and that could cost
you business".
Because that is true, it is bad for users in general for the company to be
able to do this - if you *must* use their product to compete, they can
charge whatever they like for that product and/or force you to buy their
*other* product (in a market where they aren't currently strong) in order
to obtain the product you need. This means making illegal for a company in
such a position some tactics that are perfectly legal for their
competitors (who aren't in that position) as you can always dump the
competitors if you don't like their terms.
To use an analogy - if there are a number of competing road owners, it is
in all their interests to allow cars from other roads onto their own roads
(and for cars from their roads to be able to travel on other owners).  If
more than half the roads are owned by one company, it is in the interests
of that company to stop allowing traffic to and from one (any one) of the
other owners . It is also in the interest of that company to buy up or
form "strategic partnerships" with (ie, get agreement from them to do what
they are told) smaller road owners, possibly at the same time as
threatening to cut them off from the majority of the road network and cars
if they don't play ball.
At some point also the road owner can think about getting into the car and
car fuel markets - knowing he can leverage "correct" decisions about which
car to buy or which fuel to use by initially making his roads more hostile
to other people's products, and finally by insisting you buy their choice
of car/fuel or you won't be allowed to be a customer of their road.....

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