AlphaWolf
I prey, not pray.
Xade said:That said, I'm agreeable to the idea of stopping companies gaining *total* dominance. However, I don't think it fair to split companies, etc. Who says the government should be allowed to break and make companies as it sees fit?
Well, when an entity has an entire market locked down, innovation tends to halt and inflation increases. Before the US broke up AT&T, it used to cost a dollar per minute for long distance calls, and that was in the 60's when a dollar was worth a lot more even. Now its not uncommon to have 5 cent per minute long distance calls, or better yet, flat rate unlimited long distance. The same thing is happening with the FCC mandating that phone companies lease their lines to competitors...if you were ever late on a phone bill payment, you used to have to "reactivate" your line for a $300 fee, whereas nowadays if they don't reactivate your line for free, you can just switch to another carrier.
The same thing is going on with microsoft and the web browser right now. Most of you look at internet explorer and think "this is just fine", but the actual reality is that it has gone nowhere in the past few years, whereas the other browsers are constantly making improvements that nobody even notices, primarily because if web developers take advantage of these, their monoculture IE visitors wont be able to notice anything.