Microsoft
Facebook, Apple, and Google all got away with their monopolist power grabs because they don't have any 'S's in their names for critics to snarkily replace with '$'s.
Facebook, Apple, and Google all got away with their monopolist power grabs because they don't have any 'S's in their names for critics to snarkily replace with '$'s.
In the late 1990s Microsoft started bundling its web browser, Internet Explorer, with its Windows operating system. This effectively destroyed the Netscape company, who up until then had the most market share with its browser, Netscape Navigator. Microsoft was involved in a legal case against the U.S. government, which required Microsoft to allow IE to be uninstalled among other remedies. Removal of Internet Explorer has no clear solution as libraries and utilities associated with Internet Explorer are used across other Windows applications.
The comic sarcastically states that this stopped companies from creating a monopoly on software practices. Unfortunately, platform developers such as Apple, Sony, and Microsoft have restricted third-party software distribution over the internet via their own curated online stores in recent years, and will come full circle with the introduction of Metro Applications on the Windows 8. The comic also mocks the triviality of browser debates compared to current antitrust cases concerning privacy and price fixing.
Apple bundled a browser on both its desktop and mobile platforms. Apple also requires all iOS developers to sell their apps only through the Apple App Store, paying sizeable commissions to Apple, and Apple can refuse to sell any app. In some instances, Apple has developed its own versions of popular third-party apps. [1]
On Android, Google bundles in a mobile version of Chrome web browser (as of version 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich), but you are allowed to change the default browser. The company has a majority market share in web search engines, being the most popular search engine available. On Facebook, users face difficulties in accessing or removing their profiles and personal information, among other issues. Recently, this has been mitigated by the ability to download a zip file of all content ever posted to Facebook, but it still remains difficult to delete data from Facebook.
Apple has been widely criticized for trying to force all users of Mac OS or iOS to run only content approved by Apple and distributed through the Apple App Store, each sale from which gives royalty payments to Apple.
The title text refers to mocking Microsoft as Micro$oft or M$ for attempting to take too much money from consumers, and jokingly suggests that the inability to easily do this with other companies' names (Fa¢ebook? Appl€? Goog£e?) is how they succeeded at amassing power where Micro$oft failed.