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Microsoft Break-Up To Be Proposed?
lowLark writes: "The Seattle PI is reporting that the feds and most of the states have agreed to pursue breaking Microsoft into two companies." One company will be in charge of 'Bob' and the Mouse, the other will be everything else :)
There's a very good article in the Washington Post with lots of details. It also talks about the restrictions that will be placed on the Baby Bills - limits on bundling, uniform licensing, etc.
-David Ziegler
-dziegler@hotmail.com
-David Ziegler
-
If I were MS, I'd be very quiet right now, with perhaps an occasional mention of how much competition MS faces from Linux, Apache, Oracle, AOL, Sun, etc.
"What I cannot create, I do not understand."
Hasn't Slashdot milked this enough? How many "Microsoft-will-die" stories must be posted to satisfy the drooly/giggling anti Microsoft fanatics?
It's been stated already, this will go on to appeals and will probably not come to a conclusion in our lifetimes, get over it and report some real news already instead of playing the old podium game.
Realize also that any breakup of Microsoft will have very little impact on Linux. If a hardware vendor doesn't give a rat's ass about Linux, it certainly won't change it's mind like magic after any ruling.
So instead of having just one dirty handed, predatory, monopolizing business, we're going to have two! What a great solution!
The feds are going about this entirely the wrong way, they're thinking that software is somehow like oil, when infact it isn't anything like it.
The product has different properties which make breaking up the company ineffective.
1. It costs virtually nothing to copy data
2. Source between these two companies can be shared in such a way that they can basically keep operating as one company
3. The two companies would have different products (OS / Everything Else) and therefore don't have to compete against eachother unlike the oil and phone company breakups!
It's just a bad decision, I've said it from the start, and I'll say it 'till the end.
-- iCEBaLM
Are you sure about that? I would say that honor goes to applications like Lotus 1 2 3. A killer apps of old. How many of those came out of MS? Those applications as used by business, are what moved the PC from hobby to ubiquity. The consumer market is peanuts compared to the business market. The fact is that companies have been using computers (sometimes with really brutal interfaces) for years before they were common to massmarket consumers. Usually they crunched numbers (think banks/insurance/whatever), but they also wrote letters, printed payroll and so on.
Breaking the company up will harm the average user, since a high level of integration means a greater ease of use.
Greater ease of use means buying a mac :) Actually higher level of integration only means greater ease of use if the system is consistent (orthogonal). As the number of features integrated goes up the ability to maintain consistency goes down. This is because you end up with an attempt to meet contradictory design goals. This is also because as the system gets larger (and more people work on it) the need to comunicate a simple common interface (user and software) strategy goes up, but your ability to communicate it and enforce it goes down.
And for once, /. should stop and think about the average user rather than blindly following some dogmatic principle.
I don't know if everyone here advocates the destruction MS, but I do know this: those that do have good reasons that they are able to articulate , rather than pontificate from on high (and do quite vocally). You must have mistaken them for a bunch of kids going "Ah dude, MS sucks."
--locust
I'm sorry, but I really don't believe that a "high level of integration" necessarily requires the sort of anti-competitive business practices that seem to be the mainstay of Microsoft's business plan.
The fact of the matter is that it is incredibly difficult for any company to compete against Microsoft in its key areas of business, namely operating systems and office suites. Ask yourself how many people you know use an office suite other than MS Office? In fact, ask yourself how many ("non-techy") people you know who can name an office suite other than MS Office.
Is this really because MS Office is so much better than anything the competition can put out? Or is it because 75% or more of new PCs come with it pre-installed "for free"? (I say "for free" because I do not believe that the cost is not passed on to the customer in the price of the hardware)
That's all fine and dandy, until a few people you know get the version of Office up from yours, and suddenly their documents are incompatible with yours in annoying little ways...
Next, let's look at operating systems. If ease of use was really the reason that Windows is so popular, then everyone would be using Macintoshes. In my (admittedly limited) experience, MacOS is much more user-friendly than Windows. Linux zealotry asside, better operating systems than Windows do exist.
Breaking up Microsoft will not "harm the average user". In fact, it is more likely to benefit the average user, by finally allowing some real competition for a change. People will no longer be tied into a specific set of tools from a single vendor; they will be able to shop around for the software that most suits their needs at a better price. No longer will they be forced to buy the latest version of Office just because a couple of their business partners/customers/colleagues have and they can no longer read their documents properly.
No, Microsoft is not the root of all evil, and their software is not all buggy and bloated, and only half-way secure because it crashes too often to present anyone enough opportunity to crack it. But neither are they the maligned saints that you seem to think they are.
Cheers,
Tim
It's official. Most of you are morons.
But then ms came from nowhere and inialated them. No one had to use windows. It was the best and most available at the time.
Nothing came up to challenge it sufficently. Okay OS2, MAC OS, but MS always came back ?
All the kiddies on this site seem to forget this. Remember the apple2 ? Remember the BBC micro, hell even the ZX spectrum where a lot of computing gurus grew up.
But if apple had dominated, we would be in a much worse position now, what with it's proprietary hardware and software etc...
No linux then my friends !
Equally if IBM had pursued the copyig of it's BIOS by other companies (notably compaq who reverse engineered it) then again we would have another unfriendly giant to content with.
Never forget what microsoft has done for the industry, but the fact remains they got WELL out of control.
They should be broken up, into different division and FORCED to release their APIs to the OS, and also make sure that the other baby bills did not get early access to them.
Consider this also, if everyone was using different apps, operating systems etc. how would they all transfer files without being messy ? Yes HTML, PDFs etc...
Another law should be passed to provide a common file format for all applications (one for word apps, another for spreadsheets...etc..). This would solve a lot of compatability issues.
I really don't like MS, and use linux a lot at home because it I can do more easily, but it has to be said, MS did certainy help make PCs avaiable to the masses.
Just think for a minute what would have happened if the corporate giants at the time would have had there way.
Aso think Bill was once a geek, but he really MADE it and fair play to him.
Alanp
Sounds a bit reactionary, let's give the idea a minute to sink in.
1. It costs virtually nothing to copy data
Yeah, so what? It also costs nothing to copy data between Lotus and Microsoft. They don't exactly have a Cartel going.
2. Source between these two companies can be shared in such a way that they can basically keep operating as one company
This is why they need to be two companies. The Fed can dictate the terms of the break-up, and include a clause about conspiratorial practices. I expect that the terms of break-up will REQUIRE that communication between these two SEPARATE companies be conducted on open channels, via published APIs and public company press releases. Again, M$ and Lotus style. The Fed can not exert this kind of control on separate departments of one company, but they can on separate companies.
3. The two companies would have different products (OS / Everything Else) and therefore don't have to compete against eachother unlike the oil and phone company breakups!
The purpose of a company is to make money. The more money the better - since a company must show profit to it's stake-holders.
An applications company will necessarily develop for all platforms, since it will not care about the success of a particular one. Office for Mac and Linux is right around the corner. An applications company will seek to maximize profits by making it's product available on all possible platforms.
An operating systems company will seek to support as many different applications as it possibly can, to make its product OS(es) as desirable to customers as possible. It will be in the best interest of such a company to make the OS easy to code for, and to make the API available to all application developers.
If an applications company and an OS company share information 'under the table', they will be guilty of conspiracy to form a monopoly - this problem has been solved before - they are just like oil afterall.
In the case of Standard Oil, SO consipired with rail shipping companies to give preferential treatment to SO's business, and to squeeze other competitors out of the market.
If MS-Apps were to play footsie with MS-OS, they would get slapped with Sherman Act faster than you can say MONOPOLY. Besides this, they would be more PROFITABLE without conspiring. That is what business is all about, profits, not control of the market. The two often go hand in hand, but with the Fed's fingers in your pie, it's just not doable.
The point of the break-up is not to force MS-OS and MS-Apps to compete against each other. The point is to make it un-profitable for the two product lines to bolster each other's success in the market place. The point is to make all apps compete for all platforms, with no one specific combination of the two (MS-OS and MS-Apps, for example) profitting a single company.
-- What you do today will cost you a day of your life.
I am a lawyer; this isn't legal advice. See an attorney licensed in your jurisdiction if you need legal advice.
:) Remember, Stone is the one who claimed to be entitled to "artistic license" *in a documentary* when he was called on his fabrications . . . (specifically, _Born on the Fourth of July)_)
>Interesting theory, except how do you explain Microsoft Office for the
>Macintosh?
He wrote, "Oliver Stone voice." That means there's no need to be consistent, or pay any attention to the facts
>Everyone seems to forget about that one.
Noone has forgotten that, not even Judge Jackson. The Findings of Fact were quite clear about the use of the mac version to maintain windows dominance. Microsoft threatened not to ship the *completed* next version of Office as a means of leveraging Apple to make IE the "default" browser for Mac. This was to undercut Netscape, thereby lessening the general threat of Netscape applications.
hawk, esq.