2026-02-14
In the minds of most people, using a desktop computer means using Microsoft Windows. This has been the case since around 1995. From then to now, when Microsoft has had a choice between helping its customers do their computing more effectively and reinforcing its own position, it has tended to chose the latter. The European Committee for Interoperable Systems has published a history of Microsoft's anti-competitive behaviour. It is well worth reading, though it only covers up to 2009. Microsoft has not improved in the years since.
How did Microsoft acquire its monopolistic position? In its early days, it was one company among many. It had to compete. The details of how it overcame its rivals are interesting. It was not at all a story of winning because its products were "the best". The main factors were historical accidents. Other operating systems could have become the standard on PCs. The history of computing around Microsoft's early years shows this clearly.
Microsoft was founded in 1975. At this time, most computers in existence were of the minicomputer class. They were the size of a wardrobe. Unix would become their dominant operating system. A new, smaller class of computer was emerging, the microcomputer. These were the size of a cardboard box and were more limited than minicomputers. Their most crucial limitation was a segmented address space. In contrast, minicomputers of the time had a flat, linear address space. Unix would not have been able to run on the early microcomputers without alteration. Perhaps a streamlined Unix could have been made. Unfortunately AT&T, the creator of Unix, was prevented from entering the commercial computer market by antitrust law, specifically a 1956 consent agreement with the US government. Ironically, Microsoft went on to be a bigger monopoly than AT&T, but faced no comparable antitrust restrictions.
As its name suggests, Microsoft was targeting the nascent microcomputer market. Digital Research Inc was its most notable competitor. Digital Research products were in the lead on microcomputers until the launch of the IBM PC in 1981. This has been written about in great detail, but the short version is that IBM selected Microsoft's MS-DOS over Digital Research's CP/M to be the default operating system for its new microcomputer model. No one at the time argued that MS-DOS was better than CP/M. The consensus seems to have been the opposite. However, IBM was the leading manufacturer of business computers and gave Microsoft a very liberal licensing agreement. It was not obvious what would follow, but these two things catapulted Microsoft to its monopoly position.
Many good and talented people have worked at Microsoft over the years. It is Microsoft as an entity that is bad, not every employee or user. Several versions of Windows have been functional, namely Windows 95, XP, 7, and 10. Things could have been different though. If antitrust law had been applied to Microsoft the way it was to AT&T, we would not have had Windows rule the desktop computer for thirty years. Hundreds of millions of people would have been incrementally more productive. Tens of millions would have developed their understanding of computation. How many more diseases would have been cured? How many more planets would we have walked on? I think the number is greater than zero.