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Comment by _bxg1 | Hacker News Reader

1) Nobody takes the Microsoft Store seriously

2) People barely take Bing seriously

3) Nobody cares about LinkedIn as a channel for free expression, nor is it a breeding ground for dangerous ideologies

4) Microsoft is generally much more enterprise-focused than these other companies, which all have very active footholds in the lives of regular people. When it comes to something like the power to make or break democracy, Microsoft really has very little impact by comparison.

It's not that Microsoft being so big is good, but it just doesn't have an impact on the masses that's comparable to the others.

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Antitrust law isn't a tool to secure democracy but to secure competition. I don't think the worry is about actions taken by Microsoft hurting democracy; the concern is MS systems being insecure owing to a lack of competitive pressure and, as a consequence, being vulnerable to democracy-disrupting attacks.

Lack of competitive pressure?

You can run a few Linux distros as a reasonable desktop OS, with corporate support and all, if you want.

You can run Apple machines and software for desktop computing, as many companies do.

On servers, Windows is a minority.

MS Office is, of course, a one of a kind thing. Still it's interoperable with other software, within reason, and just reaps the benefits of the network effect, much as other specialized "industry standard" software.

As a monopoly, MS's position is weak now.

OK, now do the same for LinkedIn and GitHub

Not sure if that’s a question or an agreement with the parent?

GitHub is of course one of many, gitlab, bitbucket, or self-hosted being common alts.

Same with LinkedIn, it’s just social media like Facebook/Twitter/reddit but emphasizes biz

That's fair; I guess the current discourse has muddled antitrust and the other problems with big tech together in my mind, at least in terms of steps being called for and/or taken.

Microsoft is no stranger to that discussion. Echoing back to the early days of internet browsers and PC bundling.

It certainly has an impact when it comes to the operating system and metrics they collect.

> 1) Nobody takes the Microsoft Store seriously > 2) People barely take Bing seriously

The problem with using these as factors in dismissing a monopoly (or the converse) is that it's simply declaring that being really good at a thing by definition makes you a monopoly.

Is it a monopoly, or a giant conglomerate? Because those are two different sets of problems.

I assume by "take seriously" the poster meant that their marketshare was pretty insignificant along all axes. The Apple App Store has a 100% market share of the iPhone app market and by proxy has control of all apps on 90% of the entire revenue in the smartphone space. Microsoft Store has ... nothing.

Bing has 33% market share in the US an 9% globally. That's not a monopoly.

A monopoly has to control an overwhelming amount of a given market, not just be big.

And every console maker has 100% share of their app markets. Should we break them up to?

I'd not be opposed to open access rules for developers. With that said, there are 3 major consoles on the market, and then if you include phones and PCs, it's by no means a monopolized market.

So you think that Nintendo - who markets itself as being kid friendly - should be forced to accept any game?

Would you be okay if Nintendo was forced to allow the worse aspects of the mobile gaming market - advertising supported games, loot boxes, in app purchases “pay to win”, etc.? Should they be forced to allow Grand Theft Auto on their platform where you can literally beat people up with a dildo?

The mobile market is not “monopolized” either. You can choose to either publish games on iOS, Android with Google Play or Android without Google Play.

Again, no, because the console market is competitive so intervention is unnecessary.

Potentially separately, I'd not object to requiring the ability for console makers to allow side-loaded apps people themselves make. I'm not suggesting forcing them to distribute anything via their own App Stores. You can side load onto Android phones and it's not an issue. You can download and run literally anything you want onto your PC or macOS devices, and it's not an issue. You can even side-load anything you want onto your iPhones via Xcode if you have the source and again, not an issue.

Didn't they kick Gab off of Azure because of objectionable content?

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