I know the history of MS anti-trust fairly well having grown up during the core part of their monopolist years - now they're part of the familiar oligopaly that's strangling tech.
> and we know that all monopolies require government enforcement to prevent others from competing...
Do we know that? That may be true of government run monopologies, but I'm pretty sure most marketplace monopolies rely on lack of government enforcement. For example, here's some analysis showing how US case law makes the government wary of going after Amazon for driving Quidsi out of business & forcing an acquisition by Amazon: https://cei.org/blog/amazons-private-labels-dont-threaten-co.... Ironically US does enforce rules against dumping from international players which shows that it realizes the harm that such activity can have, it just chooses to allow it for domestic players abusing smaller domestic players.
and we know that all monopolies require government enforcement to prevent others from competing...
then we know that there's no such thing as a conflict between Microsoft and the us government
the us govt is to serve Microsoft and that's that. any conversation like this about the merits of Microsoft as a market participant are laughable and disingenuous
theres no programmer alive that knows the history of Microsoft that would speak about them as you have just done, as an honest company trying to make a product
actually sick to see how HN has been corrupted