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AOL Time Warner Files Anti-Trust Suit against MS
ChazeFroy writes "This article at the Washington Post says that AOL Time Warner has filed a suit against Microsoft seeking damages from anti-competitive practices over the Netscape browser."
Can't say I'm surprised.
[H}ow many viable magazines/cable channels/ISP/Movie Studios etc are there besides AOL TW...hmm, I don't have enough time to count.
The answer to your question is 5.
6 media conglomerates own just about every major media and entertainment product in the US.
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I didn't want to leave this space blank.
Yep, that is billion with a B. Do you think that the timing of the lawsuit against Microsoft had anything to do with the fact the press is catching onto the mistakes AOL has made during the merger.
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According to Fortune, "Instead of adding up to the world's most valuable company, this merger has subtracted $155 billion of market cap. CEO-designate Richard Parsons promises to do the numbers a different way."
Link is at: http://www.fortune.com/articles/2002/magazine/200
Or you could read The Antitrust Terrible 10: Why the Most Reviled "Anti-competitive" Business Practices Can Benefit Consumers in the New Economy. Note that the 8th section in the PDF deals specifically with tying and bundling. Enjoy!
grep -ri 'should work'
Wow! How old is the crowd reading this? Doesn't anyone remember that Netscape used to have the best browser out there and that they actually charged money for it? Until M$ figured out the only way they could be top dog in the browser market was that they had to give it away for free and develop it using profits from Windows and Office, a company could actually SELL A BROWSER FOR MONEY!
Once a big chunk of their revenue stream was taken away, the quality of the browser really began to suffer. Tack on the fact that M$ had some licensing agreements with many PC OEM's requiring them to NOT SHIP Netscape on PC's as well as their weird proprietary tags (not that NS didn't have a few as well) and you have a recipe for NS' demise.
Hell! M$ even courted major entertainment sites and encouraged them to develop their sites so that they could ONLY be viewed with IE for Windows! I'm a Mac user and years ago I used only Netscape and I couldn't even access the star trek website. Totally unsupported for Netscape and the lack of Mac support was just rubbing salt in the wounds.
M$ needs to pay for this reckless disregard for consumer choice and if AOL/TW wants to use their own money to fight this battle, I'm fine with that. The US government , since Bush was appointed president, has shown that they no longer have the cojones to do what is right and just.
Pooty tweet