The fact that we actually were enforcing antitrust at the time absolutely prevented MS from getting a strangehold on the consumer internet as it was taking off. It's the reason you're posting on this forum in the first place, as it was essential to the success of tech startups in the first dot-com era.
Then we stopped enforcing antitrust laws, and after about 10 years or so the new market leaders had developed the stifling set of monopolies we're all dealing with today.
Breaking up Google (which seems inevitable, this is the third distinct recent case where they've been proven to be a monopoly) is likely to be good for literally everyone, including even Google shareholders.
We can't to any P2P shit on the internet, instead everything goes through a middle man who will take your money or flood you with ads.
We have bandwidth limitations on every connection, even though bandwidth is cheaper than it's ever been.
The only universal communications system is still... Regular-ass phone calls and e-mail, which is like 100+ and 50 years old respectively. Everything else is proprietary and doesn't work with other systems.
We have to launch tens of thousands of satellites and beam data into outer fucking space in order to get internet to people.
Most of the "internet" all runs in 1 of 3 cloud providers.
We are forced to use Chrome on Windows, or use a Phone to browse the web or deal with endless captchas and having to prove that we are humans.
Search engines are all fucked and barely work. Everything is full of junk and trash. Now we need that chip production to run massive data centers to train some AI on how to sift through all the trash.
I don't know who else to blame but the tech industry itself.
Notably high profits from long-distance dialup calls kept online services stuck at 2400 bps for most of the 1980s. Futurists circa 1960-1970 thought online services were going to become widespread about 15 years than they really did and AT&T was the #1 thing to blame.
That trial found Microsoft guilty of antitrust practices and ordered the company to be broken up. What caused it to be a waste of time was that Microsoft appealed the decision, which bought them enough time that the 2000 election happened and the Bush DoJ decided to give them a slap on the wrist instead of continuing to pursue a breakup.
Actually it helped the telecom industry prosper because of independent innovation. The innovators became separate from the utilizers. This allowed both sides of the industry to mature into full three-part businesses.
I will give you that it killed other shiny unprofitable technologies. But imagine if that same thing happened with IBM? Where would IBM be today? How many old tech would be shown the door? How many companies would be buying the latest and greatest innovations?
You're ignoring the reverse causality. Antitrust lawsuits against Microsoft in the 1990s/2000s put them on edge, and made them think twice about strong-arming their competition. Back when Google was starting to make a name for themselves, MS strongly considered adding a warning on Internet Explorer, telling people to "beware" of any results they see on Google. MS eventually decided against it, because of the antitrust magnifying glass they were under. Having a level playing field allowed Google to grow exponentially, and eventually rendered MS' monopoly irrelevant.
Monopolies use anticompetitive tactics to preserve their moat, and continue being monopolies. When antitrust legislation works effectively, this moat disappears, and the monopolist is eventually overrun and becomes irrelevant.
Especially this:
> the AT&T break up set American technology back by decades and killed our domestic chip production.
US wages paid to manufacturing jobs are going down year-over-year, because of automation, and, uh, other factors. But the amount of products that are produced has grown year over year... Or was growing, until waves at everything in 2025.
I know nothing about the Microsoft decision nor the politics involved. I am simply commenting upon the quote above. An Appellate Court rules, in large part, based upon the record before the trial court and the arguments presented to the App Ct. It is therefore certainly possible for a change in administration to impact an App Ct's decision if the change in administration changed the nature of the briefs and oral argument presented by the DOT to the App Ct.
Again, I have absolutely no knowledge of the details in this case. I'm just pointing out that a change in administration can certainly have an impact upon an Appellate Court's ultimate decision by altering the nature of the presentation to the Court.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principal%E2%80%93agent_proble...
So when we talk about "the shareholders" we also include the CEO.
I guess the argument here is that that actually doesn't work and the CEO would prefer being in charge of a larger company even if it personally costs him tens or hundreds of millions of dollars.
That's what I'm skeptical of.
And just in general the incentive of management is to preserve monopoly because it’s a lot less work to sit and collect monopoly profits than to actually compete and win.
The principal agent issue here is that management can sit on their ass all day and make a lot of money instead of working like hell to compete and possibly getting replaced but ultimately creating more shareholder value.