The same way Bing is not a serious challenger to Google? If Bing is not competing with Google then that affirms the point about big tech being unassailable once it has established dominance. If Bing is competing with Google then a massive disparity between users of comparative search engines affirms that competition is alive and well, as it is in the console space too. Maybe you should tell Phil Spencer.
To the best of my knowledge the CMA have never had to assess an Amazon acquisition related to the cloud but I would expect any such acquisition to potentially go the same way. That's unlikely to be the case though, because there are no cloud companies operating in the UK that Amazon would seek to acquire.
Seems an odd way to phrase things. If you are in a race the first and last place finishers are still competing against each other. The only question is if that last place finisher had any effect on the first place finisher. MS is clearly competing with sony for market share. It's just that MS hasn't been able to take any significant market share way from them. If we look at the market as 2 players in the high end gaming market then Sony has won every single one of them by extremely large margins except one.
PS2 158.70m , Xbox 24m , Gamecube 21.74m
PS3 87.4m , Xbox 360 84m , wii 102m
Ps4 117.2m , xbox one estimated between 50-60m , wii u 13.4m , switch 125.62m
If you want a healthy console market you ideally want these 3 companies to be as equally matched in market share as possible and if possible you would want another 1-2 players to enter the market. The issue we have is that Nintendo's market share is unstable. So much so that they have left traditional consoles behind as of now and are combined their successful handheld device with their home device. The other issue is that Sony has remained the dominate for decades now in the traditional console market as even the wii had movement controllers as the default.
What we risk now if MS exiting the console market entirely leaving it to just Sony if we use the Cma's market definitions. Hopefully the series line of console is able to continue to sell well and move past the xbox one numbers but if it doesn't then we might never see another console from MS.
We also know sony is happy to buy dozens of companies ranging in price all the way into the billions of dollar range. We also know they are willing to invest stakes into other companies like epic. The longer Sony retains market dominance the less likely another company will ever be able to enter the console market.
As for Bing vs Google , part of that is that fact that Google owns android and they have no restrictions on forcing any of their services onto companies that want to use android and some services. You either take android by itself or you take android with all of googles crap with it.
I am certain that if MS wasn't coming off the antitrust cases in the usa and europe they would have been able to match itunes as it was a god awful user experiance esp on windows. They also wouldn't have had to waste time with their play for sure initiative and could have simply made zune earlier. Just like I am sure if apple was banned from linking itunes to ios then the iphone would have continued to be a failure as it was the first few months of its life that required hundreds in price cuts until the store came out. I am also sure if Sony wasn't able to consumer electronics side to build and launch the playstation they might have found themselves in a different position
When bigtech, with all its money, technical expertise and prowess cannot compete with other big tech, how is that an open and competitive market? All this teaches us if that when somebody big gets there first, unless they drop the ball themselves, they cannot be dislodged.
What like Sony getting to the console market first ?
But as the Great Brittany Spears once said "Opps I did it again"
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