Stopping The Giant

Essay by PaperNerd ContributorUniversity, Master's February 2002

download word file, 4 pages 3.0

How would you feel about a company that had overtaken the entire field in which it specialized? What if that same company was caught forcing manufacturers to use their products, and tried to get out of court cases by proposing a settlement which violated the exact thing they were in court for? There is such a company and its name is Microsoft. Microsoft has spent the past months in and out of court because of over 100 private antitrust cases. For the past 15 years Microsoft has thrived in the computer software market, striking up big deals with large companies and putting the smaller ones out to pasture. But now Microsoft has gone too far. They have begun to swallow anything and anyone that stands in its way of total domination of the computer software industry and they must be stopped.

Microsoft is abusing its relationships with computer manufacturers. Any company that distributes computers knows that if they want to sell anything they have to preinstall Microsoft Windows as the operating system.

Windows is the accepted standard for personal computers everywhere. 90% of all programs distributed across the world are designed to run under Microsoft Windows. In order for a computer manufacturer to be allowed to install Windows on any computer, they must have the permission of Microsoft. Microsoft writes up a contract for the companies, who are forced to accept. The contract the computer manufacturers must sign is a lot similar to the End User License Agreement a person accepts when installing the Windows operating system on their own, but Microsoft adds a few extra things to benefit themselves. The agreement forces the computer distributors to pay Microsoft for every computer that is sold, regardless of the operating system installed. If they do not accept to pay a certain...