Posts Tagged ‘monopoly’

1933 – Charles Darrow creates the game Monopoly. There were a few other board games before Monopoly, like “The Landlord game”, which Monopoly was loosely derived from. The board is based on Atlantic City and the playing pieces were models from items around Charles Darrow’s’ house. Parker Brothers would pick the game up in 1935 and turn it into a household name.

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Other Historical Events in Technology

• Richard Wittman Jr. admits breaking into NASA
• Sony announces release of Linux development kit for Playstation 2
• Intel gives computers, internet to employees for free.

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1999 – It was 10 years ago that we saw Microsoft go through the Department of Justice over monopoly issues. US district Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson issued a 207 page Findings of fact on this day. In it, he ruled that Microsoft did have a monopoly power over the OS in the Intel market. During the week we talked about what leads up to this 207 page ruling.

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Other Historical Events in Technology

• Aurora SPARC Linux is released
• Abilene network segment is upgraded to 10 Gbps
• Google drops the Yahoo – Google deal in pressure from the Justice department

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This week in Tech History, we look at the introductions of two items that are more Geeky than techie. The first is the introduction of Silly Putty in 1950. The second is the introduction of the game “Monopoly”. Both were a big part of my childhood.

Other items covered in this Week in Tech History – Artificial Hearts and Palm m105. The peaceful protest of the discontinuation of the Newton and Human Cloning. Also, we look at the Michelangelo virus and it’s supposed release date – which didn’t happen until the next year.

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Comcast has been riddled in the news lately. Bandwidth caps, overage fees all for simply surfing the internet. However they simultaneously opened Fancast – a Video Download site which won’t go against that cap. They also have Comcast.net, Disney Connection and Rhapsody Player Plus – All within their community.

There was another company that tried to keep their members contained within their virtual fence. That company was AOL.  However, AOL has been opening up for all to use. Still, I have to ask the question: Is Comcast becoming the next AOL?

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On April 3^rd in 2000, Microsoft was found to have an “Oppressive Thumb” on their competitors and violated Anti-trust laws. In other words, Microsoft was a Monopoly. After further Appeals and litigation, Microsoft was ordered to share some of it’s application program interfaces for the next 5 years.

It is impressive to see a company get to the point where they could be considered a Monopoly. I suppose you don’t have to be as humongous as Microsoft, or AT&T in the late 70’s when they violated the antitrust laws – but it does help.  And of course when you get to that level, you get attacked at so many different angles.

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