"Microsoft is engaging in unlawful predatory practices that go well beyond the scope of fair competition"
About this Quote
Calling Microsoft "unlawful" and "predatory" isn’t just a legal accusation; it’s a moral framing designed to make a complex antitrust fight feel legible to the public. Orrin Hatch, a veteran senator and a skilled institutional player, reaches for language that collapses technical market dynamics into a simple story: a powerful actor hunting weaker prey. "Predatory" does a lot of work here. It implies not merely dominance, but intent; not merely winning, but rigging the game so others can’t plausibly compete. That’s how you move a policy debate from spreadsheets to outrage.
The phrase "go well beyond the scope of fair competition" is the tell. Hatch isn’t arguing against success or scale; he’s drawing a boundary line that invites government intervention while avoiding the anti-business optics of sounding hostile to capitalism itself. It’s a reassurance to markets and voters: we’re not punishing innovation, we’re policing the rules that make innovation meaningful. The subtext is that monopoly power is not an accidental byproduct of better products; it’s something engineered through coercive bundling, exclusionary contracts, or leveraging one market to choke another.
The context is the late-1990s/early-2000s antitrust atmosphere, when Microsoft’s operating-system dominance became a proxy battle over who gets to set the terms of the internet era. Hatch’s sentence is political leverage: it signals seriousness to regulators, pressures the company in negotiations, and positions Congress as a guardian of consumer choice. It’s also a shot across Silicon Valley’s bow, warning that cultural admiration for tech doesn’t exempt it from old-school scrutiny.
The phrase "go well beyond the scope of fair competition" is the tell. Hatch isn’t arguing against success or scale; he’s drawing a boundary line that invites government intervention while avoiding the anti-business optics of sounding hostile to capitalism itself. It’s a reassurance to markets and voters: we’re not punishing innovation, we’re policing the rules that make innovation meaningful. The subtext is that monopoly power is not an accidental byproduct of better products; it’s something engineered through coercive bundling, exclusionary contracts, or leveraging one market to choke another.
The context is the late-1990s/early-2000s antitrust atmosphere, when Microsoft’s operating-system dominance became a proxy battle over who gets to set the terms of the internet era. Hatch’s sentence is political leverage: it signals seriousness to regulators, pressures the company in negotiations, and positions Congress as a guardian of consumer choice. It’s also a shot across Silicon Valley’s bow, warning that cultural admiration for tech doesn’t exempt it from old-school scrutiny.
Quote Details
| Topic | Business |
|---|
More Quotes by Orrin
Add to List
