Re: Intel. For a while there AMD had them on the run, until the Israeli team developed the Core Duo architecture. Now AMD is on the run, sadly. They may come back. Netbooks and mobile computing may yet change that landscape entirely.

Really great competition takes place between Nvidia and ATI (now owned by AMD). This competition keeps GPU's honest and up to date, though that's also spurred on by the games. Intel had nothing like the evolution of the GPU until AMD applied pressure.

Operating systems are trickier, but honestly, the more software that goes open-source and multi-platform (and thus out of the yoke of Microsoft) the more options people will have, the less bound to one OS or another they will become. That's been, as much as anything, the thing that's kept OS competition down. People needed their stuff to work all across the board, and so sticking to one OS made sense. The web, open-source, etc. are changing that.

Two examples I thought of basically had no competition when they achieved that status:

(1) Scotch Tape the envelope to the present.

(2) Saran Wrap the leftovers from dinner.

I haven't kept up lately but AMD was a competitor for quite some time.

They still are a major competitor. In fact, you wouldn't even have 64bit Intel chips if it weren't for them licensing AMD's technology (which is turn is based on technology AMD licensed from Intel). They also have competition from various ARM companies for CPUs, nVidia for GPU and motherboard chipsets, and others still for networking.

ntel is one of the few monopolies that has kept their product improving despite minimal competition.

I haven't kept up lately but AMD was a competitor for quite some time.

It's like, The New Gay Search Engine. Which is a good niche to occupy, I suppose, but I had thought Microsoft aimed bigger.

Saying "I binged Jessica Biel" sounds like one is making a rather ambitious claim.

Not entirely, and that's my original point. I've been able to make plugins for all Microsoft Office (for example) for almost 15 years. It's entirely possible to do so without paying Microsoft a dime using 100% non-Microsoft tools (other than Office iteslf), and the documentation to do so is 100% available on their MSDN web site.

On the other hand, yes, there have been hard limits on directly accessing and manipulating their files. Hence my original qualifier: "it's much more open than it's made out to be" and not "it's all completely open."

The standards aren't "open" in the sense that Microsoft defines them, but they're much more open than is often claimed.

They're not "open" in the sense that you have to pay Microsoft for either the right or the knowledge (or both) to interact with them.

That has changed in the past couple of years with Microsoft opening up their Exchange and CIFS protocols, but there are still issues like OOXML and .NET requiring patent licenses in order to fully implement.

You can interact with Microsoft products to a VERY large degree. The standards aren't "open" in the sense that Microsoft defines them, but they're much more open than is often claimed. And the same argument about interacting with their stuff was made as an argument over why it would be hard to make an anti-trust claim stick with them, as well. After a certain point, it stops mattering (at least politically).

Exactly. Microsoft's entire desktop product line is integrated to a degree that no other software maker even comes CLOSE to. This really is a benefit to a lot of consumers. It's *ALSO* a practice that is hyper-competitive to the point where it's become anti-competitive.

There's a great book called "breaking windows."

MS actually suffers a ying and yang on this. They can do certain things with integration, but they must also avoid certain things to keep the profit in the synergy.

I'd guess that if you like MS integration you are an Office user, willing to pay for that. People who don't want all roads leading to Office might feel differently.

Google is actually following the Microsoft model with its product lines

The difference is that Google's products use open standards: mail, calendar, chat, all of them can be accessed with non-Google software. I can use the same non-Google software to connect to someone else's services and have them work just as well.

Their actual product offerings are also going open source, Android, Chrome and Chrome OS can all be modified and re-distributed by someone else, without having to pay Google a dime.

It will be very hard to convict Google of being anti-competitive, when their competition is free to interact with Google's services, or even re-brand and re-distribute Google's software.