Microsoft: An example of being too successful (what?)

A European Union court Monday rejected Microsoft’s appeal of a European antitrust order requiring it to share software information with rivals and pay a record $690 million in fines for quashing competition.

It’s a sad day in history when a company is required to stop beating it’s competition. Or, to put it another way, it’s a sad day in history when government intervention is required to help smaller companies compete.

It’s not a coincidence that this case isn’t being brought against Microsoft in the U.S. Here, we believe in this thing called Capitalism! And we believe that the markets prevail – and the markets will wash out the garbage – and the markets will allow quality to rise to the top and excel. Bottom line – if people don’t like it, they won’t pay for it.

However, in the E.U., France, and other similar societies, you don’t get that. What you get is the government suppressing what the free market is trying to promote, and elevating what the free market is trying to suppress.

I’m not judging the technicalities of the case brought against Microsoft, I’m just saying that if people didn’t want to purchase Microsoft products, they wouldn’t. And, it’s not just because of the operating system in the computers we all buy. If the Windows operating system wasn’t popular, and nobody wanted them, the computer makers such as Dell, HP, etc… would never put them in their computers.

You see, capitalism is all about giving people what they want ~ needs create markets! And the forces of the market (the peoples satisfaction one way or another) will work everything else out. What sets a terrible precedence is when governments intervene, and decide on behalf of the consumer what is and isn’t desirable or acceptable.