Government Intervention and Antitrust Law essays

Government Intervention and Antitrust Law essays Government Intervention in Individual Markets: A Look at Government Intervention and Antitrust Law via the Microsoft Case Growth and Development in the US Economy In light of recent developments, I took a different approach to this paper. The Microsoft Antitrust case has been somewhat of a phenomenon that has become one of the most prominent cases in recent years. Because of this, I decided to look at government intervention into individual markets, along with antitrust law, via that particular case. I am of the opinion that we can learn a great deal by using that particular ongoing litigation. Antitrust law protects the public from companies that attain an undue domination of the marketplace via mergers, tying 1 product to another, vertical integration, and other practices tending to eliminate competition or bar entry into the market to newcomers. In the early 1980s, Microsoft was a much smaller company than it is today. However, it had already established a reputation of being a predator, a greedy predator. They were known to terminate licenses mercilessly once they figured out a way to clone a given technology, regardless of whether it was legal or not. Back then, Microsoft had some enthusiastic competition. The biggest of which were Borland (programming), Ashton-Tate (databases), Visicalc and Lotus (spreadsheets), as well as Wordstar and WordPerfect (word processors). All of these companies have now either merged out of existence or are completely defunct, with the exceptions of Borland and Lotus (which are barely afloat). Microsoft now has the leading product in each sector of the market once occupied by these firms. The company was responsible for ridding itself of these early competitors by either buying them out or simply driving them into the ground. This early disregard set the tone for how Microsoft does bu siness even today. Microsofts advantage comes from their domination of operating systems (...