Winners, Losers, & Microsoft: Competition and Antitrust in High Technology

Have the antitrust actions by the Department of Justice against Microsoft and other firms really intended to protect consumers, or are they politically motivated attempts to help competitors achieve what they could not achieve in the marketplace?

Can dominant companies in a market, such as Microsoft, "lock in" inferior technologies and thereby stifle innovation and would-be competitors?

Do "network effects"—the fact that some products, such as telephones and fax machines, increase in value a...