Sure they could. At the time, they could have provided the same sort of
encouragement to the clone manufacturers to preload OS/2 that MS did for
Windows.
[I realise this is a bit of an old thread, but... it's not like
Usenet's been busy. Hey, the old days are returning, but in the
opposite direction!].
As far as I know, from various sources including that famous one based
on the book in the late 90s, about the rise of Microsoft. That I can't
remember the name of...
What MS basically did, was give discounts to manufacturers and
retailers. You could have Windows at a significant discount, as long
as your business sells NO PCs with any alternative OS. For most
sellers, that's a fair percentage of a big amount of money.
So they stitched up the market and "leveraged", I believe it's called,
their small market advantage into a vast one. A company offering
alternative OSes would have this disadvantage against it's rivals, and
all other things being equal, go under. Thousands of businesses and
millions of customers manipulated.
This was (AFAIK IIRC ETC) the cause of one of the legal suits against
them. I remember at the time, Gates's moaning to the press about how
he was being picked on... "If the Federal Government demands I give
away 95% of my money to charity, I'll do it". As if that was one of
the government's powers, or a likely outcome to the case. He didn't
offer to run his business in a less predatory and monopolistic way, or
to stop buying up any company that looks like it might compete with
him, and either absorb or neglect it to death.
[All that money, and he STILL dresses like he ran through a charity
shop with a strong static charge].
The free market doesn't cope well with monopolies, and in the modern
age, businesses aren't happy with expansion any more. It's more
profitable to crush your rivals to cultivate as much as one can of a
monopoly, then charge what you like (or alternatively form a cartel
and price-fix everything), than it is to make a better mousetrap, and
rely on the consumer's own innate cannyness and wisdom to choose your
product above others, and.... all that other 1950s pipe dreaming
nonsense.
We're in the age of monopolies and megalopolies (whatever they are!).
Many corporations tower over governments in terms of cash and power,
and the simple blessing that is corruption, means politicians have to
compete for bribes with their fellows. Bribery's a seller's market
now. So you don't actually need to compete with a government, just to
fix it's minions.
As far as the 21st Century goes, I think it's probably a battle over
control of Google, with "Don't be evil" on the one side, and the
entirety of modern investment capitalism on the other. I dunno how
much control Larry and Sergey have retained thus far. Although
legally, being publically traded, they've an obligation to only do
things that make more money. It's illegal to be ethical if it costs a
stockholder a penny. An under-used defense in tax-fraud cases I feel.
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"hey let's educate the brutes, we know we are superior to them anyway,
just through genetics, we are gentically superior to the working
class. They are a shaved monkey. If we educate them, they will be able
to read instructions, turn up on time and man the conveyor belts,
sorted." #
