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Microsoft, DoJ Reach Tentative Settlement
JeffMagnus writes: "MSNBC is reporting that the tentative settlement between Microsoft and the DoJ calls for a five-year consent decree between the government and Microsoft governing the company's conduct. A three person panel of independent experts will be created to review the companys' future activity." The New York Times appears to be the original source for the settlement stories; there's also an AP article.
Perhaps I'm mistaken, but it seems to me that the breakup of Microsoft (or another dehabilitating blow to the company) might be the worse thing that could happen for the economy. I'd point out that just because microsoft might disappear doesn't mean that their products would. It doesn't matter if there's nothing to fill the "void" because there wouldn't be a void. People could continue to use windows albeit without a guaranteed upgrade cycle. If, eventually, something became good enough to supplant microsoft, it would. As long as there are still companies that haven't signed on to the upgrade-cycle microsoft has been pushing, the legacy will probably be here for years to come.
How telling is it that this happens on Halloween, under a full moon?
People can call up Microsoft
Microsoft, for the most part, doesn't even support its own products. Private companies and support techs work to support Microsoft products. Try finding an 800 number for MS tech support, you can't. Support would continue.
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Actually they're nowhere near the richest company in the world. They're number 201 on the fortune 500 list.
With revenues of only $22,956 million a year, they're a tenth the size of Exxon Mobil, Wal-Mart or GM. The top 3 on the list.
One of the articles linked here states that there would be a procedural problem if the states attempted to carry on after the judge has approved the settlement. So there is no guarantee that it would proceed even if the states wanted it to.
You can bet that MS would work that angle for everything it was worth if the situation arose. They don't need to worrry about losing or even about attempting to win if they can manage the situation such that they can stay out of court in the first place. "Business as usual" then.
If you're a zombie and you know it, bite your friend!
See, the anti-trust trial was not dealing with Microsoft Office, or their perceived monopoly in the office suite application space. Therefore, any remedy addressing Office would have been extraneous to the suit, and would not have been accepted by Microsoft. Furthermore, ther DOJ and Attorneys General know this, and thus would not have suggested such a remedy in the first place. The compromise addresses Windows (via OEM licensing practices and bundling of things like Media Player) and IE (opening of some of the source code, supposedly) because those were the two things the suit was concerned with (Microsoft leveraging its Windows monopoly via OEMs to push their internet browser to kill Netscape).
Having a monopoly IS NOT WRONG. It's not bad, and it's NOT illegal. Abusing it is. And when such an abuse occurs, you address that abuse, and that abuse only. It doesn't matter whether Microsoft happens to have a monopoly in the office suite space, because that had no bearing on the browser market. Period. Case closed.
If you don't think letting Microsoft get totally off for free, or the same thing they were let off with in 1995 which did zero good then,
I suggest you call your own state attorney general and tell them not to give into this federal get-out-of-jail free card...
CALL THEM THURSDAY MORNING FIRST THING AND TELL THEM!!
Here is a site with the phone numbers for most all of the states aj offices..
http://www.naag.org/about/aglist.cfm
Here are the 18 states still involved as complantants in the case..
Connecticut, Iowa and New York have generally been viewed as the three states championing the case. Also involved are California, Florida, Illinois, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Missouri, Minnesota, North Carolina, Ohio, Utah, West Virginia, Wisconsin and the District of Columbia.
Also call California and New York because they have the most power and have been the 2 most outspoken against the results of this case so far..and call IOWA because Tom Miller the IOWA AG is the spokesman for all the 18 states involved.
-- Given enough time and money, Microsoft will eventualy invent UNIX.
I don't trust Jobs, and really wouldn't want Larry Ellison on this panel (or Michael Dell, or Mike Cappelas, or ...). However, I have an idea of my own for one member of the panel: Monte Davidoff.
;-) Furthermore, Monte actually finished his mathematics degree at Harvard, unlike Bill Gates.
Monte was one of the three authors of the famous Altair Basic that Gates and Allen get credit for. Monte evidently wrote the math routines. He's now a software and systems consultant (Alluvial Software). It appears he does works on several platforms, including Multics.
He knows the business, and more importantly, he knows Bill.
-Paul Komarek
Send mail to Microsoft.atr@usdoj.gov and complain
Actually, MS didn't pay any taxes. I did, but they didn't.
- Dan I.
If you can't afford the nine buck for Vincent Bugliosi's The Betrayal of America: How the Supreme Court Undermined the Constitution and Chose Our President, you can always read the original article on which it is based (online). The points are unassailable, demonstrated by the fact that no GOP apologist has be able to refute it. They can't -- facts are facts. The best they can muster is to roll their eyes and whine "Get over it."
No. We won't "get over it" just to placate a clutch of putrid rightwing shysters. After attempting to villify Clinton for damn near a decade, they paid no attention to those of us who said: "He won the election, get over it." (Isn't irony ironic?) How it must gall these intellectual munkins to have their pseudo-patrotic blustering exposed as simple partisan braying. They judge everyone else's patriotism by the size of the flag they wave, yet they have no problem wiping their asses with the constitution as long as it benefits their candidate. Shrub cannot realistically be removed from office, but we can make sure he's a one-termer and is always followed by a footnote tagging him as "illegitimate".
Shrub was not elected, he was coronated. We had a coup d'etat. The supreme court handed him the election by stopping the recount, instead of sending it back to the state (as they should have). They didn't do that because Bush would have lost. Absolute worst case scenario, it would have been thrown into the House -- which is EXACTLY what the constitution provides for.
If you REALLY doubt this, ask yourself the following question: Can you imagine, in your wildest carck-induced dreams, that the Supreme Court would have stopped the election if it had benefitted Al Gore?
You do not need 100% market penetration to have a monopoly.