Did Microsoft ever have a monopoly on OSes? Hardly. Look at Mac OS, OS/2, BeOS, AIX, Solaris, Debian, Slackware, SUSE, Red Hat, RISC OS, BeOS, QNX, OpenBSD, FreeBSD, IRIX, VMS, Palm OS, EPOC OS (nee Symbian) etc.
The answer to your question is "yes" according to the antitrust litigation that actually took place — and if you would like to understand why, then pay close attention to the phrase "relevant market" in the "Conclusions of Law" document from the MS v DOJ case. This phrase plays an important role in determining monopoly status (the question raised in this thread) and this document makes interesting reading along these lines.
Whether this zone of commercial activity actually qualifies as a market...depends on whether it includes all products "reasonably interchangeable by consumers for the same purposes." ..."Because the ability of consumers to turn to other suppliers restrains a firm from raising prices above the competitive level, the definition of the 'relevant market' rests on a determination of available substitutes."
The court's opinion was that the operating systems you mentioned were not "reasonably interchangeable by consumers for the same purposes". The fact that Microsoft would be able to to raise prices "above the competitive level" was key. This was very much the case in the 90s when this litigation took place.
I would have to say that's a pretty harsh indictment of Linux distributions and Mac OS by the US DoJ.
By that definition, it makes me wonder if iTunes has a monopoly in "phone synchronisation software". This monopoly allows Apple to raise its store prices above a competitive level.
I would have to say that's a pretty harsh indictment of Linux distributions and Mac OS by the US DoJ.
On the one hand, it's a little worse than you're suggesting because this was actually the opinion of the court. The DoJ was just the plaintiff.
On the other hand, the implied indictment of Linux and MacOS of the era isn't as bad as you're suggesting. I encourage you to go though the document, since you have the URL handy and I gave you the phrase to grep for. Take a look at the following excerpt:
The Court has already found, based on the evidence in this record, that there are currently no products - and that there are not likely to be any in the near future - that a significant percentage of computer users worldwide could substitute for Intel-compatible PC operating systems without incurring substantial costs.
Now I know you're tempted to rephrase this in some way that bolsters your perspective, but be careful with such temptations, for if & when Apple finds themselves in the same hot water it's going to happen through litigation and the determination will be made in a court — where the tool of choice is linguistic precision in general, and pulling key definitions & tests from precedent in particular. Every word in the above quote has weight, and you should make no substitutions if you want to gauge how things might play out were litigation brought against Apple.
In the above excerpt, note the phrase "Intel-compatible PC operating systems", which is part of the definition of the "relevant market" under which the determination of monopoly status was judged. The MacOS of the era ran only on PowerPC machines and some aging Motorola 680x0 hardware. So there's no harsh indictment of MacOS here.
As for linux of the 90s, I suppose you could look to phrases like "significant percentage of computer users worldwide could substitute" and "without incurring substantial costs". Linux distributions of the era could not rise to that standard. Although you would be correct to note that vendor lock-in played an important role in those "substantial costs".
I'm going to break away from my devil's advocate argument.
I was rhetorically trying to show:
i) The parent's argument is weak. The existence of competitors is not sufficient to show whether Apple is or is not a monopoly. Microsoft had a lot of competitors. Even in 1998, there was a lot of OSes.
ii) The argument that Microsoft was a monopoly was, frankly, ridiculous to begin with, based on defining a market in an oblique way. The same argument could be extended into many fields to show that many other products have a monopoly.
Even so, I do believe that Microsoft engaged in anticompetitive behaviour in actively trying to destroy Netscape and its desktop OS competitors. The weak "monopoly" argument should be sidestepped completely, since it was terrible to begin with.
I do think there is an fine line between limiting creativity and preventing anti-competitive behaviour, and it's not clear where that line is.
I think the EC's "browser choice" decision is shocking given that a web browser is an integral part of any OS, especially in 2011, whether that OS is Windows, Mac OS X, a Linux distribution or whatever else.
I do think Apple and the iPhone creates genuine questions about where the line should be drawn. Is it reasonable for them to close up the protocols in iTunes to prevent anyone from creating their syncing software? Is it reasonable for them to want a cut from downloadable content on their platform?
In my mind, they will always be anti-competitive practices, whatever the letter of the law says.
Again, with respect to your second point, the court had no choice but to pursue what you believe was "ridiculous", because it is required by section 2 of the Sherman Antitrust Act:
The threshold element of a § 2 monopolization offense being "the possession of monopoly power in the relevant market,"...the Court must first ascertain the boundaries of the commercial activity that can be termed the "relevant market."
...and it was germane to the standards regarding product tying relevant to section 1 of the same act:
Proceeding in line with the Supreme Court cases, which are indisputably controlling, this Court first concludes that Microsoft possessed "appreciable economic power in the tying market," Eastman Kodak, 504 U.S. at 464...Because this Court has already found that Microsoft possesses monopoly power in the worldwide market for Intel-compatible PC operating systems (i.e., the tying product market), Findings ¶¶ 18-67, the threshold element of "appreciable economic power" is a fortiori met.
(Both of those excerpts are from the same Conclusions of Law document, of course.)
It's very easy for you to say that "the same argument could be extended into many fields to show that many other products have a monopoly." It's quite another thing to frame your argument in terms of section 1 & 2 violations such that the way you have defined your "relevant market" actually pertains to product tying and preservation of monopoly power through anticompetitive acts. In other words, it's not enough that an anticompetitive act happened: it must also have been used to preserve power — and not just any power but monopoly power, and not just any monopoly power but monopoly power in a market relevant to the anticompetitive claims. And even if you manage to frame it this way, it still must pass through the crucible of the court, as it did in MS v DOJ.
In my mind, they will always be anti-competitive practices, whatever the letter of the law says.
Anticompetitive acts are not illegal in and of themselves. They are illegal for establishment or maintenance of monopoly power, however — and one can't apply that test via hand-waving. The Sherman act is very specific.
I'm replying to the reply to your post, and not your post because for some reason I can't reply directly to it.
Microsoft has >90% market share in OSes. The existence of a rival product doesn't negate a monopoly. The existence of a true alternative negates a monopoly. Apple doesn't even have a dominant share of ANYTHING except portable music players (which, incidentally, play content from other vendors just fine -- oh and you can _legally_ rip your Apple DRMed music to CD and play it anywhere so where's the lock-in?).
If the reply gets beyond a certain depth there is a built in delay (that gets longer the deeper you get).
It's there because Hacker news has decided that there is no value in deep conversations, they prefer the more shallow ones and feel that they get a better result that way. Presumably it also serves as a brake on certain kinds of anti-social behaviour such as flamewars and trolling.
It's in the terms of service or rules for newbies or something like that.
(edit: went looking for the text in the guidelines so I could link it, but couldn't find it. Sorry. It might be one of PGs articles that I was thinking of)
The problem is that they had a huge share of the market, and they abused that to keep other players out.
With respect to computer manufacturers they had a variety of illegal practices which meant that it was difficult or impossible for them to sell other OSes. Since Apple doesn't sell its OS for generic PCs, the main player this hurt was Linux. From memory an example of this was that the OEMs had a huge discount on the 'face' price of Windows, but if they sold anything except Windows they couldn't get this special price, even for the Windows computers they did sell.
Similarly they drove Netscape out of business by bundling Internet Explorer with their OS, and then later retrofitting the OS so that IE was baked into a bunch of things that it hadn't been baked into previously (such as Explorer), such that removing IE and replacing it with Netscape or $other_browser would actually break Windows. They didn't have to do that, and it didn't make any sense to do that, except for the express purpose of breaking Netscape.
As for OS/2, allegedly Microsoft stole all the good technology to use in their own products, and then played silly buggers to the point where it was massively delayed.
BeOS died an unnatural death, which is odd. Neal Stephenson has this interesting article about that. I'll link to the cliff notes in case you're in a hurry:
The thing that gets me about BeOS is everyone I personally know who used it raves about it... but when I go looking for old pictures of it, it is butt ugly. I mean truly hideous. Dos pre-windows 3.1 hideous. It is worse than 90s Linux is how bad it is. :D But hey, apparently it was the superior technology, and yet nobody would sell any PCs with it installed ... FOR SOME STRANGE REASON (cf above discussion on Microsoft's 'intimate' relationship with PC manufacturers)
Not especially. Syncing was a major pain in the butt for most devices back in the old days. I don't think that Apple were trying to establish a monopoly on synchronization software, I think they were just trying to make it easy and painless to use. Whether they succeeded or not is an exercise left to the reader. I think that some people just have this image of Steve Jobs as some bond style villain stroking his white cat and holding the world to ransom for one meeelion dollars /pinky in corner of mouth/
However, if you asked me whether their proprietary dock connectors were an abominable crime against humanity, you might get a different answer. :D
Somebody did do a ten(?) year update to it with Stephenson's blessing, but from recollection I think they didn't really grok why OS X was so good. They also didn't write as well as Neal, but hey, that's not an especially exclusive group.
It is good and original, but the bits that are good are not original, and the bits that are original are not good.
I recall reading it and thinking "he got that wrong, and that's wrong, and that's wrong, and all of that is wrong" all the way through. I think he was one of those pundits that fundamentally just doesn't understand why people like working with an OS like OS X, they think it is because of some superficial silly reason. Like "consumers like it because it is white and shiny" or "because the UI is pretty".
No no no. A thousand times no. I and everyone I have talked to who uses both, prefer the Mac because Windows is like the death of a thousand papercuts. There is in general no one thing you can point to that is especially horrible (obvious exceptions: Win ME and early Vista and Win CE), but there are a million different things that all add up to an unpleasant experience.
Disclaimer: I used Windows 7 on a decent spec machine recently and it was actually pretty good. But see the above quote about good and original. If Windows is going to end up just copying all the good bits from some other OS, why not switch to that OS now and get the benefits straight away rather than waiting 5-7 years?
That really sounds like a distinction without a difference. MS had control of 90% of consumer and office computing. True? Apple doesn't control anywhere close to that in phones.
My premise is that embedded devices and servers don't matter to the vast majority of people who use computers, then and now.
If you're a home or office user, you can't use a server to do your work. You can't use an ATM to do your work. You can't really be pretending the desktop computer market is some narrow or obscure thing, can you?
In 1998, as a home or office user, you had a very specific set of choices for computing tasks, of which Microsoft controlled the vast majority.
