Monopolies wouldn't exist in the free market?

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Your 'given' doesn't work. MS does not, and has not used technical means to break competitors.

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Wow, I don't think I've ever seen a post more divorced from reality. There are many documented cases of Microsoft using technical means to try to break other companies' software, including IIS intentionally responding slower to requests from Netscape than from IE, their various attempts to break DR-DOS, changing the .doc format every version to break Open Office and (earlier) Corel and Lotus, and their numerous "extensions" to open standards designed to make them proprietary (see Kerberos and their failed attempt with Java).

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Instead, they go to great lengths to maintain "bug for bug" compatibility between versions, so that whatever program you use continues to work. This takes enormous effort on their part (documented in this blog and book).
MS is far superior to Apple or Linux in backwards compatibility and it has been a big contributor to their success.

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Backwards compatibility is easy to maintain when you know exactly what changes you are making to try and shut everybody else out.

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Also, they produce a new OS version about every 5 years. That's too slow to crush competitors.

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Windows is not MSFT's only product.