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Comment by scarface74 | Hacker News Reader

From the article

Firms like Microsoft led in the innovation in creating new barriers to entry. How could one compete with a browser provided at a zero price.

I think what happened to Microsoft is the perfect example of how to overcome a monopoly.

20 years ago, everyone thought that Microsoft’s monopoly was unassailable. Google barely existed, Facebook didn’t exist, Amazon was a bookseller and Apple was basically bankrupt.

20 years ago, Netflix had a few million DVD customers and AOL was the largest ISP.

Who knows what will happen in the next 20 years?

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But importantly, the government went after Microsoft for anti-trust and actually won even if they didn't break them up. It's impossible to really know the counter-factual of what would have happened if it wasn't sued for anti-trust. But, you can safely say it wouldn't have thrown a lifeline to Apple with the investment and it may have been much more aggressive in these emerging spaces. I still think it was still not fundamentally "ready" for the Internet and mobile but I do think that lawsuit made it much, much friendlier to newcomers.

But, you can safely say it wouldn't have thrown a lifeline to Apple with the investment and it may have been much more aggressive in these emerging spaces.

Microsoft "saving" Apple is apocryphal at best. The $250 million that MS invested wouldn't have made a difference when Apple lost a billion the same quarter and spent $100 million buying out PowerComputings Mac license.

Microsoft tried aggressively to get into mobile, search, and the music business. They failed at execution.

ISPs are monopolies in the purest form. Here in Orange County, California, you have no choice but go with Cox. And that's why an internet service, which costs less than $10 around the globe and is symmetrical and offers higher bandwidth, costs $100 here! Even worse when it comes to the business internet service! I had to find internet service for a church here in OC and the pricing starts at $200 for 10 Mbps!

Isn't there a chance that in the next few years that the last mile competition will eventually be solved by wireless?

Not that there's truly unlimited wired Internet in the US, but as far as I'm aware, most wireless Internet plans are limited, and throttled, so, those are not the same service to compare anyway. More than 10 years ago, some mesh wireless providers were offering some competition, but I don't think they exist anymore, so, Cox' only competition is the ridiculous AT&T DSL service.

I have AT&T Fiber - $70 a month all in no extra fees are taxes. Gigabit up and down theoretically. I can get 600Mbps/600Mbps on a bad day wired and 900 u/d on a good day. It's unlimited.

I'm not saying that wireless is a good alternative for everyone but I know a lot of people that could get away with the "unlimited" plans that carriers offer. In the future it could provide real competition.

The plans aren't throttled any more - as soon as you reach limit they automatically cut you down to 2G speeds, you are "deprioritize". Meaning that if you are in a heavily congested area, your speed will be lowered to give lighter users full access.

When we were between renting and buying we were in a place with horrible internet and we used our phones on t-mobile for everything - including streaming to an Apple TV. We used 70-150Gb per month mostly at night with no noticeable speed issues.

For technical reasons, I'm more accepting of wireless data limits than wireline. No matter how much a wireless carrier spends, they can't beat physics. There is a limit of how much data can be delivered over a certain spectrum (Shannon-Hartley theorem?)

Lucky you! Cox for $100 gives you on average less than 100Mbps downstream and 10Mbps upstream.

> 20 years ago, Netflix had a few million DVD customers ...

Off topic, but I was amazed/interested, so: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netflix#Founding_and_establish...

"Netflix was founded on August 29, 1997 ... Netflix was launched on April 14, 1998, with only 30 employees and 925 DVDs available ..."

So you're technically wrong, but not far off. I thought Netflix was closer to 10 years old than 20.

this whole topic is because of political considerations and if you just look around you will see nearly all members coming from the same party parroting the same lines. throw in lots of google money which was the basis for a story recently bemoaning Amazon's influence and you can see its all for naught.

there is lot of movement by said members in Congress to invoke antitrust by drowning people in buzzwords and FUD. If anything the larger American based companies brought up as issues themselves face even greater competition from overseas. What we have to fear besides even more regulation on our own industries is having it turn into a trade war when overseas entities not burdened by the same restrictions start to compete.

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