Monopoly has nothing to do with HOW you got there (Score 1)

Being a monopoly has nothing to do with how the company gained its power over a market, it only has to do with its control over the market. You have to remember, the anti-trust laws were put into place because the government saw big-business as a potential threat to its control. If a company has too much influence over a major market, it can usurp authority from the government, and they dont like that, so they try and split those corporations up before they become large enough to do that. MS is up on antitrust charges because they do have enough influence to usurp authority, not much as of now, but unchecked, it will only grow. AOL Time Warner, having a vast amount of market control over TWO major markets, is a much larger problem, and depending on the outcome of the microsoft trial, could become an even bigger one. Lets say for instance, microsoft loses, they get broken up, there will be a vacuum where they were, and everyone is already lining up to try and step in if that does happen. Right now, AOL Time Warner looks to be the biggest contender, so, not only will they have the influence they have now, they will have a majority of what microsoft would lose. A very large threat, possibly.