[Info-vax] Business Practices (was: Re: Vax Station 4000 VLC)

[Stephen Hoffman]

On 2018-12-27 18:55:16 +0000, Phillip Helbig (undress to reply said:

> In article <q00abf$1lb$1 at gioia.aioe.org>, =?UTF-8?Q?Arne_Vajh=c3=b8j?= 
> <arne at vajhoej.dk> writes:
> 
>> At some location at some time it was a legal requirement to give users 
>> the choice of browser.
> 
> I never understood that.  If you don't like the lack of choice, don't buy it.
> That would be like buying a Peugeot and demanding that they support 
> replacing the transmission with some third-party product.

If hypothetical-Peugeot made most of the cars and most of the trucks in 
the world and hypothetically also set the standards for tires and fuel 
composition and other details, then they'd be under regulatory 
scrutiny, and particularly around their competitive business practices. 
 If for instance, some third-party was using Peugeot parts or Peugeot 
fuel and hypothetical-Peugeot then started making changes centrally 
intended to make that re-use far more difficult or more expensive—if 
hypothetical-Peugeot used their market position and market domination 
to clobber third-party vendors and whether clobbering other vendors as 
a monopoly or monopsony—then this hypothetical-Peugeot entity would 
draw the interest of and probably the ire of regulators.

It's not that hypothetical-Peugeot is being forced to use a third-party 
transmission, it's that the vendor has become a monopoly or monopsony 
in the market for the purposes of regulatory oversight, and are being 
prevented from using their position to further clobber competitors.

This same sort of the scrutiny was aimed at Microsoft.

Related reading:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Corp.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Browser_wars
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_antitrust_law
etc.



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