Competition is Good...Unless It's Not

Microsoft's recent play for Yahoo!, an effort to advance its online advertising market share and more effectively dominate the entire world compete with Google, got me thinking back a bit to those interesting days in the late 90s when Microsoft was having to defend its monopoly status in the operating system market. A couple of graphs and quotes might be helpful, here.

So, according to Microsoft, the market on the left is just fine and doesn't need any intervention, whereas the market on the right has no compelling "number two competitor" and would benefit from some consolidation.

I think that's called wanting to eat your cake and have it at the same time.