Yea it matters. If monopoly was achieved through market competition then fine, if it was achieved through destroying other companies then it is illegal and unfair. But once dominant market position is achieved company still needs to behave properly and not stifle competition.

Antitrust legislation is about keeping the markets competitive, because it also keeps them healthy. In that context, it doesn't matter if the monopoly position was achieved "fairly" or "unfairly", but only what effect on the market it has.

Coincidentally, this is also how legislation was implemented in this country until 1980s. Which is to say - this is what we did back when our economy was both prosperous and stable.

For a good example of just how much teeth anti-trust used to have before it got Borked, read this court opinion in one case from 1962: https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/370/294/#tab-opi...

What would be valuable in the case of a monopoly that is achieved through market competition is to require the monopolist to help other compete as opposed to breaking up the monopolist. The former promotes competition to the benefit of the consumer and the latter promotes competition at the expense of the consumer.

Just following your argument down that road... What if one day there is only one company in the whole world? if they just slowly envelops all the other companies, and perhaps met your definition of this being legal and fair, would that be fine?

Gotcha. I would be surprised if the gov couldn’t find some incriminating emails though of executives talking about how to kill Bing when MSFT looked like it was gunning to be a search competitor.

We will see though.

Believe it or not Android was response to Microsoft's Windows Mobile(Windows Phone) and not to Apple's Iphone. Google was afraid at the time that Microsoft will release it's own "smartphone" and put Bing(Windows Live Search) as default search engine on it. But eventually Windows Phone killed itself and Google is good to go.