Witness for US
"Finally, the MIT professor Franklin Fisher, a giant in the field of antitrust economics who had worked with Boies on the IBM case, argued that Microsoft had created high barriers to entry in the operating-system and browser markets, and that the company had the ability, even if it didn't use it, to raise prices almost at will - two key tests of monopoly power."
Witness for MS
"The DOJ was doubly surprised that Schmalensee was the only economist in Microsoft's quiver. (The government had two.) In an antitrust trial, there are two big issues for an economist to address: Does the company in question have monopoly power? And has it abused that power? Both Boies and Rubinfeld told me that if they'd been advising Microsoft they would have counseled the company to concede the first issue, as Boies did in the IBM suit, so as to strengthen its hand on the second; both believed Microsoft hadn't done this out of fear that the concession would be used against it in future antitrust litigation. But by asking Schmalensee to advance both claims, Microsoft placed him in a vulnerable position.
Boies punched holes in Schmalensee's attempts to assert that Linux, BeOS, and the Palm OS posed a significant threat to Windows. But the coup de grace came on Day Two. In preparing for Schmalensee's cross, Rubinfeld and his team of economists were startled to discover a 1982 Harvard Law Review article in which the witness argued that "persistent excess profits" indicate monopoly power - an argument that contradicted his current position. The DOJ had no doubt that Schmalensee would have an explanation ready if Boies asked about this. How could he not? Yet when Boies confronted him with his own writing, Schmalensee was dumbstruck. He said, slightly slackjawed, "My immediate reaction is: What could I have been thinking?"
Bill Gates:
"I asked Gates if he believed it was possible to have a monopoly in the software industry. "In operating systems, no," he said.
Impossible?
"It's not possible."
Why?
"Because people's expectations of what they want out of the operating system are constantly changing. They want something better. Why have I increased our R&D from a few hundred million a year to $3 billion? Because it's a very competitive business.... A monopoly is where you don't have competition. The notion that this is a market without competition is the most ludicrous thing I have ever heard in my life."
I really think anyone with an opinion on MS needs to read:
THIS STORY!