[robbick]

Has there been evidence given why these 4 and not Microsoft are at these hearings? I understand each case is subtly different but it seems conspicuous in it's absence. In terms of Big Tech companies potentially violating anti-trust feels odd to include companies 1,3,4,5 but not 2? (Not actually sure what the current comparative values are)

[Kednicma]

Presumably Microsoft, having been convicted once already, is not going to be given such benefit of the doubt as to be invited to a hearing; instead, folks may well decide to bring suit against them without bothering to drag them before Congress as a pretext.

Moreover, Microsoft doesn't have a flagship product which they're using to abuse their monopoly position. The other four do: Apple has its app store, Google has its search+ads vertical and its app store, Amazon has its delivery service, and Facebook has its social+ads vertical.

[scarface74]

And only if you redefine “monopoly” as “only one company gets to sell its own products”. Why not drag the console makers in too?

[zozbot234]

I'd say Amazon's "flagship product" is its platform, not so much its delivery. You might call it a platform+delivery-logistics vertical. Regardless, their ownership of the dominant platform for ecommerce does put third-party vendors (and possibly consumers) at a disadvantage.

[spaced-out]

What anti-trust practices should Microsoft be questioned on?

[jsnell]

They did just have an antitrust complaint in the EU from Slack in the last week...

And there was some hoopla a year ago about the windows licensing terms changing in a way that made migrating Windows workloads from on prem to cloud difficult for the main cloud providers except for Azure.

[Anechoic]

As pro-am mentioned, non-defeatable Telemetry.

[zozbot234]

Double jeopardy, I assume. There was already an antitrust case wrt. Microsoft in 1998–2001, so they won't need to defend those issues all over again.

[non-entity]

Would double jeopardy only apply if they were being charged for the same instance of antitrust violations as back then?

You can commit a crime multiple times, you just can't be punished for the same instance twice. Maybe I understand this wrong though.