Microsoft's troubles started after the DOJ antitrust investigations. I think if Microsoft had been allowed to aggressively leverage their Windows monopoly as they wished, we woul be looking at a far different landscape now

This seems to be a great example of correlation does not imply causation.

Sadly I can't disprove this fallacy because I don't have a counterfactual world to show you.

But I would argue that if you look at post-DOJ Microsoft, that also happened to be the same time that:

  * Microsoft was rudderless
  * the internet became the source of lots of extremely cheap software (including SaaS),
  * Windows software quality gave us gifts like Conficker
  * Microsoft was busy prosecuting software pirates and burdoning legit users with licensing keys
  * Microsoft lost out on smart phones, tablets, cloud services, etc which grew *far* faster than desktop software
  * OS X became a more compelling alternative to Windows for home/business users
  * Linux continued to eat Windows server market share

You are blaming the DOJ (ad EU Commission) investigations for Microsoft being a massive ship and turning slowly in an age of rapid innovation. They got fat on intellectual property and patents, then never bothered to trim their business to their core competency. Perhaps this will change in the post-Balmer years, but only time will tell. I would argue that the only thing that Microsoft has really dominated recently has been console-based gaming, and it's not because MS got split up for anti-competitive behavior (because they didn't).

Did the DOJ stop MS from trying to compete in Music - where Apple first mounted its comeback before the iPhone. No, Microsoft has tried and failed at music four times.

Did the DOJ prevent Microsoft from trying to compete at search - where Google dominates. No, MS has poured billions in Bing.

MS didn't try to compete in social or ecommerce.

It seems we are trading one behemoth against another. I would much prefer if we had more smaller companies competing with each other.

In other words: Unless you kill all competition forever, you aren't killing competition at all?

Should we apply the same to homicides? Unless you kill everyone with no survivors left, you didn't kill anyone?