The Social Cost of Dominance
This isn’t about deadweight loss, nor welfare transfers from buyers to sellers. This is about an object lesson in what happens when a company is sufficiently close to monopoly to be able to stop competing vigorously. Microsoft must have had no need to actually advertise to sell its products, for quite some time. We now discover that it has been in a position to suck welfare out of buyers as long ago as June 1991. At least that is the only explanation we here at the Antitrust Review can find for this “promotional video” that surely caused viewers to want to run and hide, rather than upgrade to MS Dos 5. 
HT to /.
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September 13th, 2007 at 4:02 pm
Truly horrifying.