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Comment by flakeoil | Hacker News Reader

Yes, Microsoft should be broken up. It's scary how they have their tentacles everywhere. Both Consumer and Business focused. OS, PCs, Browser, search engine, Ad network, professional social network, news outlet, cloud infra, cloud tools, dev tools, games, gaming platform, gaming hardware, server OS and DB, office tools locally installed, office tools in cloud, cloud storage, CRM, ERP, personal video calls and messenger, video conferencing tools and business messenger, owns github, owns npm, owns 50% of OpenAI. I have probably forgotten a few.

Imagine all the cross selling and tricks they can pull off having all this inhouse.

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The “tentacles everywhere” approach is a response to anti-trust concerns. Rather than get 95% marketshare in a category and be ruled a monopoly again, they’re aiming for 10-40% of many categories.

Which is amusing, given the history of anti-trust enforcement in the US. Most activity in the middle of the last century was aimed not at companies owning 95%+ of a market, but companies owning every step of a supply chain, smaller pieces of different markets. The focus was on encouraging competition, which has very much not been the focus for the last 40+ years.

Maybe so, but 30-40% is often enough to be a market leader.

And within the IT segment as a whole they for sure are dominant. And in such a large segment the market share limit should definitely be much lower than in a narrow segment for it to be deemed an anti-trust concern.

>> [Microsoft] owns 50% of OpenAI

Microsoft will reportedly get a 75% share of OpenAI's profits until it makes back the money on its investment, after which the company would assume a 49% stake in OpenAI.

Google is even more integrated and monopolistic than even MSFT. Google is almost impossible to avoid.

Maybe we need oligopoly laws in addition to monopoly laws.

Saves a bunch of time for the national security state too.

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