Microsoft

Beginnings of Microsoft are little know in post-communist countries, because first PCs became available about 10 years after their introduction in the US.

Microsoft was so successful not because of the quality of its software (Microsoft does not even know what quality means till today), but because they realized the value of monopoly position and how much money you can make if dictate the standards.

They did not start as a company doing something better. They started by lying about their ability to deliver on time. They announced software 2 years before release just to fend off potential competitors. They underpaid all their employees. They cheated and lied to their customers, and general public. The main "goal" was to get the monopoly position, to "kill their competitors", no matter what. (For example, Bill Gates allegedly said "MS-DOS is not done until Lotus stops working". They used secret API, slowed down or prevented competing programs for running. Netscape story is peanuts against everything else that was going on. Their "mascot" was a Borg half-machine, half-humane with the tune "Resistance is futile".

They succeeded and we pay the price till today. There is no operating system worse than Microsoft and none is more expensive. And no producer of OS makes more money.

So far, it might be a story about a few smart thieves, liars and cheaters, who got rich, no harm done. But we all pay for their wealth and it is not a (economically) harmless transfer. We pay by our low productivity, by the need to patch, protect, anti-spam our computers and networks, by significant amounts of time and energy lost in productivity due to their programs that are sometimes intentionally made defective.

Compare this with Google - a company started also by two guys. They did something better than everybody else. They never asked or strive for monopoly position (and they don't have it). Their motive is "Don't do evil", instead of a pure evil symbol from Star Trek.

It boggles my mind how much money have been lost due to Microsoft in the past and how much will be in the future. Because they have their monopoly position and they are not going to give it up. Voluntarily.