Microsoft Monopoly

Assessment of Microsoft's Monopoly

Microsoft has for decades engaged in commercial activities both with its direct enterprise customers and its many distribution channel partners that could be considered monopolistic. While Microsoft has long asserted it is one of the most efficient competitors there are in an oligopolistically-based market of enterprise and consumer software, in reality its strategies and tactics show a pattern of deliberate monopolistic behavior (Information Management, 2009). Microsoft initially used complex contracts that defied legal interpretation to limit their Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEM) from installing any other operating system besides MS-DOS and later Microsoft Windows (Werden, 2001). At this same time Microsoft also devised a pricing strategy that made it economically impossible for its OEM customers including Dell, Gateway, IBM and many others from installing or even supporting any other operating system. Most recently Microsoft was fined by the European Union (EU) for bundling its Internet...
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