How the Antitrust Battles of the '90s set the Stage for Today's Tech Giants

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The 1980s saw major changes in the tech and telecommunications landscape, primarily the breakup of AT&T, which agreed to end its telecom monopoly by splitting into a number of “baby bells.” At the start of the ‘90s, the Federal Trade Commission was already scrutinizing computerized systems that seemed to facilitate entirely new monopolistic and collusive schemes. In 1992, for instance, the Justice Department sued eight major airlines for running a price-fixing scheme through their computerized reservation system. Companies would signal their fares in obscure ticket metadata, creating what the complaint called an “electronic smoke-filled room.” (The case eventually went to a settlement.) Meanwhile, the newly ascendant Microsoft was gaining a startling amount of power in the personal computing market. Microsoft and regulators were in nearly constant conflict throughout the decade, starting in 1989, when the FTC flagged an agreement between Microsoft and IBM as potential collusion. Microsoft spent the first half of the ‘90s largely dismissing these concerns. It agreed to a 1994 consent decree that supposedly limited its ability to lock out competitors, but Bill Gates’ one-word assessment of its effect was “nothing.” This changed after Microsoft was hit by what Gates, in a 1995 memo, termed the “internet tidal wave.”


How the Antitrust Battles of the '90s set the Stage for Today's Tech Giants