“Imagine, if you will, that it’s the late Nineties. A certain
software company based in Redmond, Washington has recently released
Visual Studio 97–thereby bundling together many of its development
tools for the first time. Now imagine that the company decided to
release those tools for free. What do you think the general
reaction would have been? Applause for Microsoft’s generosity? Or
widespread condemnation for using its market power to make such a
transparently anti-competitive attack on other makers of
development tools–most of whom, like Borland, were already
struggling anyway, and that were far more dependent on their
development tools revenues than Microsoft was on its…?”