Such a monopoly will instead be overcome by becoming irrelevant in some other place, and then that place becoming dominant in some way.
That place will be Asia, and Microsoft knows it. A few years back China and several other Asian nations announced a project to replace the WinTel platform with a non-American platform.
http://www.japantoday.com/jp/news/293936/all
This includes an effort to replace the BIOS-Intel based hardware, and replace the operating system (Red Linux).
The second step will be that China becomes the top economy in the world and can call the shots on an international scale. While the USA will have outdated WinTel platforms burdened by intellectual property fees, China et. al. will have a $50 box (India is talking about a $10 box) that out performs the old WinTel boxes in every measure.
After this the computer hardware and operating system will be truly irrelevant.
This is actually a good thing over all, just a very bad thing for the USA. We will finally have the dream of ubiquitous computers, and they won't be American made.
The other way Microsoft is in trouble is from a further irrelevance caused by
Google's office suite.
Microsoft is acting like they know these things already. They have just announced Vista + Office in a reduced version for $3 in the Orient. This is a desperate attempt to try to keep the Asian countries on Windows.
Violence (lawyers) is the last refuge of the incompetent. - Isaac Asimov -
and so Microsoft brings up the specter of patent issues. This is monumentally stupid and will be detrimental to the future of computers in the USA. While we (the USA computer industry) has hoards of lawyers fight out these issues, the rest of the world will just quietly laugh at us, and innovate. I hate to sound like some McCarthy era nut case, but what Microsoft is doing is Un-American.
I tend to think globally and feel that the whole Us vs. Them is a bad viewpoint, the problem is that the contributions that the USA computer industry could be making right now, is being squandered on the petty battles and skirmishes of irrelevant legal issues.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/04/26/microsoft_default_phenomenon/
http://www.reuters.com/article/technology-media-telco-SP/idUSN1538059620070515
TF
P.S. Lookout for Africa next century.
Historical Note: The USA used to own the world shipping industry. Around 1900 the USA responded to global competition with extensive tariffs on foreign shipping. The result was a trade battle, that the USA lost, and now ships are built in Greece and Korea.
