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Comment by chaostheory | Hacker News Reader

I can't help but think of MS in this situation. It reminds me of MS breaking into the video game console market and fighting really hard to stay in it. Even after a major hardware snafu that cost them an estimated 3 billion dollars they kept fighting. After six years of work, it's finally doing well.

WebOS was worth fighting for and it was in better shape than the 1st and 2nd Xbox IMO. What a waste.

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Was it worth it for Microsoft, though? Their entertainment unit made 32 million dollars in profit last quarter – a quarter which they considered an immense success. With that kind of income, the project will never break even, never mind turn an overall profit. Even if you consider intangibles like strengthening the Windows platform, it's hard for me to believe that those billions were best invested into Xbox.

That is irrelevant.

You can use a monopoly to get monopolies in other markets. You go into those other markets and take losses, until all others have quitted.

Then, when you have another monopoly, you can earn back the money. It might not have worked so well in the hardware games consoles.

Actually, what you describe is illegal in most developed countries. Microsoft knows this better than anyone. They've been strung up for "bundling" and "predatory pricing" many times. Also, their position in their "monopoly" markets are weakening by the day.

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