Even if Microsoft was no longer a monopoly (which, by the way, is entirely incorrect), you can't always hope for a new emerging market to break up a monopoly. The hold that Google has on digitized data is nearly unassailable at this point.
Google became a verb which demonstrates a solid position. I was interviewing at Yahoo and was given a project problem. The interview said "Feel free to Google stuff to build the project", I joked back "Don't you mean Yahoo it?" He laughed and said "No, you can use Google. We all use Google here, it's fine."
I think they're pretty dominant
The trouble is, how do you compete with Google, now, today. We use to have Lycos, Hotbot, Yahoo, Dogpile ... Duckduckgo is far from even approaching Google's share.
I don't think the future is the free market. The future is developers making distributed platforms that everyone can support. The next YouTube won't be centralized. The next search won't have removable results, because they'll be cached among all the computers that contribute to that search.
If there is no central governing body (like FB or Google) then these decentralized networks will be pure anarchy...in which case it won’t take long for government to jump in and mess everything up with a bunch of nonsensical regulations...just look what happened with BitTorrent and now Crypto currencies.
You seriously think the government is gonna do a better job at regulating Google or Facebook then these companies themselves? The incentives are simply not aligned...it’s all gonna go to hell my friend :(
I fully agree with your prediction that the future is decentralized and probably non-commercial though.
Windows proficiency is still considered the standard for computer literacy. Your toy phone can do things, but thats nothing compared to a laptop or desktop.
And theyre making a move on the cloud too, leveraging their dominance in productivity suites. It has been more effective than many here guessed, with FLOSS like LibreOffice competing in the same space.
And they still have those same business practices.
The role of the government is to correct for market failure. A company that has the power to be a gatekeeper (for other companies) to the industry (and uses it) is too big.
Don't believe it? Remember Microsoft? They used to dominate our industry and crush innovation. Their tactics made Uber's seem soft and fuzzy. Sure the government gave them a knock but that didn't slow them down. Do you know what did? Apple and iOS. They missed the boat on mobile and now they're still valuable but not an existential threat to the industry.
It's really hard for a tech company to dominate over the decades. Apple has been near death multiple times in the past and while they have a ton of money, they aren't exactly innovating anymore. It will happen again, it's in their DNA.
Facebook is just Myspace 2.0 that was smart enough to snatch up Instagram (starting to show its age), and Whatsapp. Acquisitions != innovation.
None of these companies are threats to technological progress in the long term. Something new will show up a that disrupts their entire model. It's happened with every boom cycle in tech history.
The trick is to look for the next big thing and ride the wave and not look to the single most regressive institution in existence (the government) to come help you.