“Last week, European Union commissioner Mario Monti inflicted a 497 million Euros fine on Microsoft – the highest fine in the history of European antitrust regulation. The case against Microsoft was waged, in Europe as it was in the United States, by its competitors. What these companies don’t want is for Microsoft to ‘prevent’ them from succeeding in the European market. What competitors really fear is Microsoft’s ability to satisfy consumers better than they do, at a cheaper price,” Alberto Mingardi writes for The Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty.
“Microsoft is far from the only practitioner of integrated applications. Apple integrates and bundles its own software for Internet browsing (‘Safari’) as well as for multimedia applications (‘Itunes’). In the parable of the talents (Matthew 25:14-30), the ‘wicked and lazy’ servant who hid his talent in the ground is punished and the money is taken away from him. The productive and the entrepreneurial are praised, whereas the lazy is blamed. Antitrust rulings such as Mario Monti