In the early 1980s, Microsoft was a much smaller company than it is today. However, it had already established a reputation of being a predator, a greedy predator. They were known to terminate licenses mercilessly once they figured out a way to clone the given technology, regardless of whether it was legal or not. Back then, Microsoft had some enthusiastic competition. The biggest of which were Borland (programming), Ashton-Tate (databases), Visicalc and Lotus (spreadsheets), as well as Wordstar and WordPerfect (word processors). All of these companies have now either merged out of existence or are completely defunct, with the exceptions of Borland and Lotus (which are barely afloat). Microsoft now has the leading product in each sector of the market once occupied by these firms. The company was responsible for ridding itself of these early competitors by either buying them out or simply driving them into the ground. This early disregard set the tone for how Micros

Drawing further attention to itself, Microsoft invested in Apple Computers. They purchased $125 million in non-voting stock. This act was seen by many, upon first glance, as an effort to further dominate the computer market by swallowing another competitor. However, if one were to consider the pressure that Microsoft was, and is enduring from the government, one can see an entirely different motivation for the investment. Apple was struggling and this purchase of non-voting stock is helping to keep the company afloat. As long as Apple remains intact, the computer giant we know as Microsoft has another "competitor" that it can point to in its fight against antitrust violations.

Clausing, Jeri "Senator Takes on Microsoft in Antitrust Hearings" New York Times, 11/05/97, http://www.newyorktimes.org

PCWeek, 11/20/95 http://www.zdnet.com/pcweek/news/1120/omsn20.html

This administration has taken great efforts to spur technological innovation, promote competition and make sure that the consumers have the ability to choose among competing products. [This} action shows that we won't tolerate any coercion by dominant companies in any way that distorts competition. (Labaton 2)

Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 2449
Approximate Pages = 10 (250 words per page double spaced)