Microsoft: a Remedial Failure

Each era has its landmark antitrust case. And each such case is a creature of the competitive context in which it arose. The Standard Oil case1 grew out of the enormous consolidations, the trusts, that accompanied the shift from local or regional markets to national markets. The Alcoa case2 arose in the context of unprecedented scale economies in basic manufacturing, at a time when manufacturing was king. The AT&T case3 took place at the boundary between competition and regulation, at a time when regulation was giving way to competition in a number of sectors of the economy. The Microsoft case4 involved the relatively young software industry just as it was facing the “Internet Tidal Wave.”5 In such