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Microsoft Settlement Talks End In Failure
fremen was among the first to write with this news: "Yahoo is reporting the end of the mediation talks with Microsoft. Richard Posner has declared the discussions to be at an impasse, and the disagreements to be "too deep-seated to be bridged." The story can be found here." This is not an April Fools joke. Watch this space; we will update this story as more details become available. The outcome may be more dramatic than the strong hints of settlement had suggested. Updated 3:15GMT by timothy: Here's a more detailed article from The New York Times helpfully sent in by reader GenetixSW.
Maybe it is a April fools joke, but if it is everyone is taken.
Clearly, this is a very bad thing for Microsoft as a company (who knows about the stockholders.) The decision will be released and can be used in other Microsoft trials. Settlement was really in their best interest.
--Karl
RayChuang wrote (in part): "You reap what you sow. You have just set back the computer industry six years or more as we have just set the stage for the 'balkanization' of the computer industry with multiple competing standards."
/either way/ is all I'm saying. It's no exaggeration to say that a lot of hardware sales have been because Windows does not take advantage of hardware the way that Linux and other UNIX variants do.
I disagree with the thrust of this claim. And I am *not* in favor of breaking up MS -- making me probably a minority both as a slashdot reader and slashdot author, though I've not seen any real poll data;) -- but not for this reason. In fact, I think a flood of competing 'standards' (none of which is truly fixed, perfect or universally accepted) is the best thing that could happen to the computer industry, and the thing which is most harmful about Microsoft's market dominance.
Why? Because a robust marketplace of ideas is anything but abstract in the computer world. Ideas in the form of bits really are competing for acceptance, based on the interaction of human prejudices, interface, capabilities, availability.
There are simultaneous upheavals in the hardware world as well as the software world -- and not just whether chips are 32 or 64 bits, or whether they take RAMBUS memory. The whole idea of what computers are for, whether they ought to be special-purpose or general (and as part of this, whether the processing power that defines the abstract "computer" available to a given person / organization ought to be distributed or all in one place) is still up in the air.
We could 'standardize' on something -- new law passed tomorrow says "You may only use MS Windows 2000, rev 2 or below" -- but that's not how a free market works, or ought to. Standards shift, mindsets change, the unthinkable becomes commonplace. Sure, the software environment will affect the hardware environment, but in the case of OSes running on commodity hardware (as is the case with Linux, the various BSDs, Be, Solaris and others*), why should a breakup of MS per se have an effect on hardware sales? It could go
Just thoughts,
timothy
*I'm ignoring the other processors these can run on only because they're not germane to this line of reasoning.
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
Oh, yes, I think there should be no more tying. IE should be separate, and so should the office stuff.
I was just pondering the implications of that statement... does that mean Be would no longer be able to ship NetPositive (their web browser), sound recorder, CD burner, etc. with the OS? Or would the ruling apply only Microsoft because they were the ones guilty of predatory marketing?
As a side note, something fishy's going on: as of right now, not one moderation has been performed on this story... please say it's not another April Fool's Joke(tm)
Revenge against a company that makes software? Oh dear. Move over Hitler, there's a new villain making way.
*eyerolls*
Open Source. Closed Minds. We are Slashdot
What I find most amazing about this whole thing is that it was started to protect Netscape, as lame a software company as ever came down the pike.
Here was a company that took a free browser, made it proprietary, cleaned it up a little, and grabbed 85% market share, not because it was any good, but because they had a head start. On the basis of what was basically an HTML file viewer, they announced their intention to topple Microsoft. Investors believed them, and the money started pouring in. They used it to go on an acquisition spree, hoping they could buy and popularize enough stuff fast enough to maintain their lead; relatively little original code ever came out of Mountain View. And when this silly plan didn't work, they were lame enough to blame Microsoft instead of their own hollow business plan.
Netscape's stated plan was to leverage their browser share, and they immediately started doing all the things that we get ticked off at Microsoft for: adding proprietary tags, encouraging sites to write to their specifications instead of to the open specs. In the early days, this was pretty effective, since Netscape jumped the gun with such things as table tags and font tags, which were pretty radical tools for early web designers. But such a strategy was doomed to failure, since each new feature became increasingly less useful than the previous one. When people started to notice that very few copies of Netscape were ever purchased (it was free for students, government, and non-profits), they said that their plan was to make money by selling servers, and that they were going to use their browser share to drive the server business!
Eventually, the investors lost their shirts and nearly everything else, but not before Netscape management became wealthy. But of course, it would have been suicidal to admit that their business plan had been as bad as it was; to do so would have invited a massive shareholder's suit. Instead, we've been treated to the spectacle of whining billionaires, one of the worst inventions ever to come out of Silicon Valley.
The most ironic thing is to hear these losers tell us the secret to Microsoft's success. Well, if they're so damned smart, how come so many people lost so much money on their company?
Please don't construe any of this as a defense of MS; I'm just sick of hearing guys with zillions of other people's dollars complaining that they didn't end get more. Yeah, maybe MS did end up with a monopoly in browsers, but if Netscape had concentrated on making a decent product instead of trying to topple Microsoft by churning out crap quickly, they might still be a player instead of a little component in AOL 6.
Yes, the judge doesn't understand that Microsoft is criminal to the core. Yes, the judge is continually trying to look for a change of heart, a sign somebody there has a clue. Yes, MS is taking all of this as signs of weakness in a purely darwinian armwrestling match. But there's still the law, and there's still the judge- and Microsoft doesn't make all the rules. Who noticed all the details on the failure of settlement? Posner pointedly avoids laying blame for the failure on Microsoft- yet the last straw was when he read Microsoft's latest proposed terms. _I_ think Posner is going back to Jackson and saying "I give up. These guys are the biggest criminals I've ever seen! They're not even ashamed of it! Everything they've proposed has intentionally had loopholes you could drive a truck through, they don't even bother concealing it. They have no good faith at all, it's absolutely sick to watch. Nail 'em. Nobody can say we didn't try, and they can't even say I was prejudiced- I thanked them and implied it was the states' fault. Excuse me while I go _wash_ _my_ _hands_... euggggh!"
I'm serious- I think these judges have been beating their heads against Microsoft's obvious, relentless criminality, astonished that it doesn't even understand what they're trying to do. And I agree with Cringely that MS can see this only as a sign of weakness, because they are so far outside the law in their heads that they can't even comprehend it (something which shocks the hell out of the judges). But Cringely is wrong if he thinks that is going to help them- MS is NOT the law, and to the legal system, it is not a defense to say "I am innocent because all this legal stuff is crap anyway! I kick ass wherever I want and you can't stop me 'cause you're weak and cowardly!". That is... not an effective position to take.
It is the position Microsoft believes, in its heart. And so, I see Posner giving up, going irreconcilably against Microsoft (Posner's first love is the law, not power) and cleverly issuing statements to block even the implication that he was biased and quit due to unfair prejudice against Microsoft. His statement seeming to blame the states... is for the appeals courts to appreciate, not us.
The latest Cringely has a very interesting take on the vast difference between the judge's way of looking at things and Microsoft's, and how that explains the failure to reach any agreement.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Folks,
You reap what you sow.
You have just set back the computer industry six years or more as we have just set the stage for the "balkanization" of the computer industry with multiple competing standards. This will be the ultimate IT manager nightmare, because they will have be current on multiple competing versions of Windows, Linux, BeOS and whatever x86-compatible operating system comes along the line.
The result is very simple: IT managers will start to sit on the sidelines waiting for the standards to settle down before buying any new hardware, and it'll be akin to the side effects of the AT&T breakup in 1984. You can tell what THIS will do computer hardware sales.
Don't laugh when I say "I told you so" at the end of 2001 when the computer industry is in the doldrums because of the combination of the collapse of Microsoft and the collapse of the Internet industry due to stockholders demanding profits.
Raymond in Mountain View, CA
As for the "tying" of Internet Explorer, I still don't see the issue with this.
The issues isn't that they did it. It's how they did it.
1) In their own words, Microsoft indicated that they were giving away IE to undercut Netscape.
2) They went out and paid off several large ISPs (from AOL on down) so that the ISPs distributed IE instead of Netscape.
3) They threatened to raise prices on OEMs such as Compaq if they shipped Netscape preinstalled.
4) They forbade OEMs from placing any other Internet or ISP-related icon on the preinstalled Windows desktop.
5) They paid and rewarded large websites that included IE-specific features like Channels.
6) They tied key Windows system DLLs to Internet Explorer, so that some 3rd party applications would be forced to have IE4 as a prerequisite for install.
The plan was to cut off Netscape's "air supply" -- meaning cut their revenue stream, cut their distribution points, cut their new user supply, and discourage development on Netscape-specific features. During a period when the Internet was growing exponentially, the plan was a incredible success -- By 1997-8, many of the early web users were still on Netscape. but a huge majority of new users were on IE.
--
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
In large part, this money is coming from the baby boomers, the largest segment of which were born about nine months after 1945. They are now 55 years old, and will be retiring in about ten years. In about five years, they will start moving their retirement money from long term growth (stocks) into guaranteed value high liquidity (bonds), and thus the demand for stock will drop precipitously. Once the slide begins, other fund managers will sell, and the system will cacade downward.
The folks who will really be shafted are those who will be retiring in about 15 years: they will be trying to convert to liquid assets right at the wrong time.
Luckily for folks like me who were born at the end of the boom, things should have stabilized by the time we start moving our funds over. If our fund managers are smart, they will be buying stock like mad during the correction, and thus we'll make out like bandits.
Now, I'm on record. Let's see if I'm right...
www.eFax.com are spammers
(let's try that again...)
I have a song request: anybody who lives in the Redmond area, see if you can get your local classic rock station to start playing Queen's Waiting for the Hammer to Fall off of Radio Ga-Ga, and dedicate it to Bill.
www.eFax.com are spammers
While Microsoft was a monopoly from 1995 - 1998, owing to the overwhelming success of Windows 95, the changing state of computers has done more to level the competitive playing field than any consent decree possibly could.
Much has been written about Microsoft's ability to dominate the desktop. Nearly every Microsoft basher worries that Microsoft will be able to leverage its strong desktop position into a powerful server and internet position. They argue that Microsoft will assimilate like the Borg, spread like a virus, but the numbers simply do not bear this out.
IF Microsoft were a classic monopoly, they would try and leverage IE into forcing NT / Win2K sales. IE now dominates the Windows desktop space - it's bundled after all. However, as much as IE has gone up, the use of IIS and WinNT as a web server has remained even at best in terms of share. In fact, IIS is starting to go DOWN against Apache.
You would think that since Microsoft completely owns the client, that they would be able to force Windows NT as a server, or at least provide a compelling reason to use NT over some other server technology. They have not. Windows NT / 2000 market shares are steady, not increasing. Indeed, Linux is the growth player in operating systems. Not Windows.
One might also think that because Microsoft rules the desktop, they ought to be able to leverage an online service. This has been the biggest and most damning failure of the company. MSN has been bundled into Windows 95 since the get go. This alarmed a lot of people, but as it turned out, AOL not only succeeded in the face of this, but triumphed. While MSN goes from being a core part of the operating system to being a web based streaming media thing to a web based thing to possibly up for sale to something else, AOL has become the dominant owner of not only network infrastructure (Cable), but content (Time / CNN / etc). At AOLs level, the choice of browser or even operating system is almost trivial and is certainly non-relevant.
All of the talk about Microsoft dominating the Internet has been just that, talk. That they destroyed Netscape was sad, but in the grand scheme of things the destruction bought them absolutely nothing. They have not dominated the server market. They have not dominated the online services market. They have not even protected their interest in retaining control of the PC - internet appliances are all the rage. Microsoft is about to be slammed by the justice for committing a crime that had no reward. In retrospect, the destruction of Netscape was a phyrric victory, a business decision that achieved none of its objectives for a price that may ultimately threaten the business itself. You may not like the destruction of Netscape because you whine and sob, Cat Stevens like, about the evils of capitalism. But even the most hardcore capitalist at this point has to conclude that the destruction of Netscape was not even very smart.
This is my sig.