I think you're making up antitrust law as you go along. If it were an antitrust issue whenever a company makes allegations against another company, half the companies would be guilty of it.

You mean you can't use a server OS to run desktop applications and you can't use a desktop OS as a server?

You mean Apple didn't make any laptops?

Unlike Joe, CEOs could put policies in place to diminish Crony practices.

Being "well-connected" is the reason that CEOs are grossly overpaid to the determent of their companies and their shareholders.

Cronyism also includes creating a job specifically for a buddy.

This action raised the average executive IQ at both companies!

"Antitrust is a way for competitors to use the government to interfere with your business." "We were being evil and wrong and got into trouble for it."

Well, in MS's case the first statement is a fact, the second an opinion.

Any comparison between MS's "monopoly" and that of Standard Oil's or AT&T's is remote at best. No specially crafted "market" definition was required for the latter companies to be considered a monopoly like MS's monopoly on "desktop operating systems".

"Once again Microsoft chooses to litigate instead of innovate."

A lesson they learned from Sun, IBM, Oracle, AOL and the other competitors who lobbied for the antitrust action against them.

"Antitrust is not about your competitors complaining about you. Antitrust is when you are so economically powerful that you can destroy the free market and create a situation in which you economically destroy anybody who competes with you."

And yet MS's antitrust problems stemmed exactly from competitors complaining about them.

that this had something to do with an IPO?

If you say so. There is a fine line, however, between, "do your own research" and "I don't have any citations".

There wasn't much speculation on it happening to Java, so I would say that the patent-fearing speculators have a pretty poor record so far.

No, because their customers didn't care what language the application was written in.