This week, the CEOs of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google will have their “Big Tobacco moment” when they all appear before a congressional antitrust committee and try to defend what are clearly illegal business practices. This hearing is fascinating on a number of levels, and I can’t wait to see the evidence that investigators have amassed against these too-powerful firms. But as someone well-versed in Microsoft history, there’s one element of this evidence that I’m particularly interested in.

It's called “copy, acquire, kill.”