I agree that their search engine and ad platform could be classified as monopoly. However I disagree that their actions have been anti-competitive in any manner.
They have a huge chunk of the search market but you can still use very good search engines like bing, yahoo, ask, aol or the awesome duckduckgo.
Google is continually tweaking and improving the design, speed, results and features of their search engine in an effort to stay ahead of the competition.
The reasons that people don't use the other engines are not because of google being "anti-competitive" but rather due to them offering a superior service.
I'm not sure what you mean by a WIFI SIM card. A SIM card is designed to run on a GSM network.
Outside of a wifi area you would need to use some sort of network to transmit your data.. there really is no option other than a GSM/CDMA carrier.
Also, we have the problem of distribution now. Microsoft doesn't have the same retail presence that Apple has. Google proved that selling handsets direct to consumers doesn't work that well. Nokia closed down their stores in NYC, Chicago and London. Think of the retail stores that T-Mobile, AT&T, Verizon, Sprint etc have across the country... there is no way to compete with that.
The GSM protocol is design to handle voice data and is well optimized and uses surprisingly little bandwidth. Skype is much heavier on bandwidth in comparison. The skype protocol wasn't designed to be used as you walk through areas of low signal or for 1,000 users going through one cell phone tower at once. For simple voice data... the GSM protocol wins hands down.
If you want to imagine any Microsoft/Skype/Nokia/Windows 7 mash up.. what if they adapted the Skype p2p technology for use on handsets to allow you to connect through other handsets to get to a base station? This will allow you to route around network congestion, prevent dropped calls, reduce network infrastructure and increase network coverage.
Nokia makes the cell tower infrastructure through Nokia Siemens... If anyone could do this, it is Nokia. Imagine how hard carriers would push a p2p handset. </dream>
> first thing should definitely be hiring a lawyer, though
I guess this depends on how much money you lost, if you are willing to throw good money after bad, if you had any sort of agreement that you can show your lawyer and if this bloke has any assets.
You may spend a lot more time and money than you lost pursuing this...
Today is a holiday, so there is no trading... but it is a weekday so the press will have this thing over and done by the end of today. Tomorrow it is old news.
Tomorrow is also their earnings announcement. That will have a bigger impact on the stock than Steve taking time off.
Tomorrow they will talk about Mac App store results, 10 billion apps sold, Verizon estimates and drop hints about revenue from their new products in 2011 (iPad 2 etc).
This wouldn't work outside the USA (unless you want to research the carriers) and most people would be connected to wifi.
So, this wouldn't really work. It would be much easier with a BlackBerry as they transmit the vendorID (a type of carrierID) in the UA. You could easily check this with the IP.
Give us all a few hours.