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AOL Time Warner Files Anti-Trust Suit against MS
ChazeFroy writes "This article at the Washington Post says that AOL Time Warner has filed a suit against Microsoft seeking damages from anti-competitive practices over the Netscape browser."
Can't say I'm surprised.
...with the lawsuit(s) that the states are still pursuing against Microsoft? I thought that part of the reason for the states v. MS was these type of problems (MS trying to squeeze out Netscape). And even though AOL has already had their input on the matter, I guess they still have the right to sue. Seems odd that they'd just now jump on the bandwagon, and that they could have been on it all along...
"No matter where you go, there you are..." - Buckaroo Bonzai
This is like watching your two least favorite football teams play in the Superbowl. You know a lot is at stake, but you can't bring yourself to care.
I liked this quote: AOL executive John Buckley noted the court ruling and said, "This action is an attempt to get justice in this matter."
And by "justice", he means "money".
-B
"You can't literally put the market back in the competitive position it was in, so you'd have to think of a forward-looking remedy to help restore competition in the market as best as possible,"
Exactly what would this "forward looking remedy" be? I seriously doubt a stripped down version of Windows would fly. Customers just wouldn't buy it. Not without a serious price cut, in the >30% range, and can we seriously make the claim that 30% of the value of Windows is in IE?
I think this may be a case of too little, too late.
. --- If you're looking for free e-mail you won't find it here! http://www.noemailhere.com
(IANAL, of course). This is the silver lining to the disappointing outcome to the government's anti-trust case. While I would have preferred the anti-trust case to have resulted in a breakup of Microsoft or other strong measures against the company, it did at least hold that Microsoft was a monopoly.
This allows other companies large and small to launch their own suits against Microsoft and have a good shot at winning. This could end up costing Microsoft a huge amount of money and effectively curtailing their worst business practices.
Hey, I can dream, can't I?
Sailing over the event horizon
As for Netscape... how are they meant to compete when Microsoft (which owns the OS) ships IE with the OS and threatens manufacturers to dump Netscape's browser or face higher OEM costs and other punitive measures? You cannot compete in a market if your competitor has systematically destroyed it.
I don't friggin' get it.
AOL is the largest ISP in the world.
AOL has the most subscribers in the world.
AOL owns Netscape.
AOL bundles IE with it's software.
huh?
What are they gonna sue for? Stupidity?
If you do what you always did, you get what you always got.
Of course, it's always amusing watching free software advocates (who think software should be free/beer) whine about Microsoft giving away software for free.
Alright, you win.
I'll stop whining about Microsoft making IE strongly integrated by default in its operating systems (you know, the ones that come installed by default on 90+ percent of the PCs that you find in stores?)
In particular, if Microsoft started giving away free software such as AOL 7.0 or Red Hat 7.2 or the source code to IE as part of their magnanimous gestures, then I'd be prepared to eat crow.
I'm waiting.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
That's right. The Netscape browser stagnated while Microsoft continued to pour money into IE development and to give IE away for free.
To anybody who says that Netscape should have just made a better browser and competed better: let's play a game of Monopoly! Except I'm changing the rules a little bit. I get to start with all the money I've ever won from every other game of Monopoly I've ever played (six figures by now), while you start with the standard $1500. This means that every property I land on, I can immediately buy and build hotels on, while you've got to work to earn your money.
Think this is unfair? Quit your griping, and put more attention into playing a good game! You can still beat me, it's a fair fight!
I much prefer to see non-government entities going after Microsoft. It makes me uncomfortable when I see state and federal entities going after a company that doesn't have "clear cut" criminal activity going on. They *have* done harm to other companies. Those companies should sue.
Much as I dislike them, the government's lawsuit against Microsoft has always looked a little too much like the government getting nervous with MS's cash reserves. The gov't doesn't like entities it can't push around.
My sig hates me. That's ok, I never cared for it much anyway.
I won't disagree that Microsoft has performed their fair share of monopolistic anticompetitive activities. What less can you expect from your favorite corporate giant intent on dominating the industry.
But netscape had a running head start in the browser market, and for a while, Microsoft was constantly playing catchup. Had netscape kept Microsoft in that position, then browser integration would never have been a viable option, because people would have been upset with microsoft if netscape failed to perform properly, or if they didn't really want IE tightly integrated with their OS. The fact that Microsoft already had the market share of the browser market by the time the integration took place makes the whole issue a non-issue after all.
Netscape lost their market because they stumbled. They got so caught up on insane stock prices and trying to be the supreme leader in the computer industry that they completely neglected to do the exact things required to achieve those goals. And they got blindsided by Microsoft. They have nobody to blame but themselves.
Of course Microsoft has/had an almost inexhaustable source of capital to work with. They can throw money at a problem forever. But Netscape wasn't exactly broke. They had plenty of working capital and they had friendly business relations with other significant corporations like Sun. They had every ability to set the standards and run with it. When early implementations of IE with ineffective java support were breaking, Netscape and friends should have made the push to drag those customers to their camp, while Microsoft was behind.
And they needed to KEEP RUNNING. But they didn't. They chose to stagnate. They let Microsoft catch up, and clean up their browser, along with adding the ability to properly render buggy code so they would be the "more compatible" browser when netscape would break on poorly written HTML code. They gave Microsoft the chance to play the "embrace and extend" game and were forced to switch into playing catchup themselves. And that's a game Microsoft can play forever.
So don't cry too much for Netscape. They had their chance. And they blew it. They've done wonderful things, and I really wished they would have remained on top. But those days are gone. Crying about it now won't help them.
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
Netscape lost their market because they stumbled. They got so caught up on insane stock prices and trying to be the supreme leader in the computer industry that they completely neglected to do the exact things required to achieve those goals. And they got blindsided by Microsoft. They have nobody to blame but themselves.
I'm no Netscape fan-boy, but how do you figure? If you had actually followed the events at the time, you'd know that the only reason Netscape "stumbled" was because Microsoft came along and put ten times more money into the development of IE while giving it away for free. Remember, Netscape was only free for non-commercial use (it was $30 otherwise).
Netscape was faced with a rival that had an order of magnitude more resources and cut off their major source of revenue for development. As a result their browser became a buggy mess as they didn't have the time to do the decent development there were doing before.
Let's be very frank here: Netscape died because they were forced out of business by anti-competitive business tactics of a monopoly power. Period. Netscape 4.x sucked because of this pressure, not in spite of it.
- j
I think you'll find the web will become considerably more friendly towards Mozilla & Netscape 6.x when AOL uses the Gecko engine in its clients. AFAIK the Compuserve is going to switch over pretty soon now.
Personally, I believe that AOL's service sucks. Furthermore, I disagree with the whole AOL/TW thing. In my opinion, content providers and connection providers should be separate entities.
But let's ignore those comments for a moment. I feel I must applaud AOL for filing an Antitrust suit against Microsoft.
Further, although I dislike AOL, I believe it would be beneficial to the consumer if AOL makes strategic alliances with every company that competes with Microsoft. This means they wouldn't buy those companies, but the group of companies can, together, provide quality, lower-priced products and services and crush Microsoft.
Consider the recent rumors of AOL buying Red Hat. If, instead of buying, AOL made a strategic alliance with Red Hat, began providing a native Linux AOL client, and mass-mailed CDs containing a Linux distro with the client, this would give millions of AOL users a choice in operating systems, increase the amount of Linux installations out there, and decrease Microsoft's market share.
Suppose AOL and Linux distributors got together and made such alliances with other companies that produce brand-name commercial software that competes with Microsoft's products. Thousands of titles and hundreds of companies are in this position. And suppose that this large alliance now makes deals with computer manufacturers. If only one large manufacturer, like Dell or Compaq, sold PCs with preinstalled Linux and bundled brand-name software, it would heavily reduce Microsoft's market share and bring the entire software community one step closer to winning the fight against the giant squid.
But it'll probably never happen. And besides, RMS would probably commit suicide, so it's probably best, for his sake, that this never happens.xxxxx O xxxxx H xxxxx xxxxx W xxxxx E xxxxx L xxxxx L xxxxx
Just couldn't let this one go by:
Microsoft isn't being sued for including the desktop/start menu etc. They are being sued for leveraging their monopoly on the kernel+OS+desktop into other software tools. They do have the right to include their web browser. But as a monopoly, they don't have the right to:
In my opinion, Microsoft has broken many many laws, the most aggregious being the use of exclusive licensing agreements with manufactures to lock out alternative operating systems and products.
Heck Be (may it rest in peace) offered all PC manufacturers BeOS for free if they would include it on their shipping computers. Lots of companies were "interested". Microsoft prevented this from happening by threatening/extorting the manufacturers with their illegal "licensing agreement" and in the end only one, Hitachi, took them up. Even then, Hitachi was forced to hide the partition so you had to go through a labyrinth of steps to boot into Be.
I think if any of the PC manufacturers ever grew some balls (or got desperate enough) and sued Microsoft for predatory pricing/illegal practices, they would have the best chance of all of winning a shitload of damages. Unfortunately, Microsoft would be able to drive any big manufacturer completely out of business before they could win in court.
There is no trap so deadly as the trap you set for yourself
-Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye
Did it occur to anyone that AOL possibly bought NSCP for no reason other than to have the avenue open to do exactly this -- file suit against Microsoft.
NSCP wouldn't have had the time or resources to do it, but AOL basically 'bought' a case for them to dump onto Microsoft. AOL on the other hand has the time and more than enough resources to make this a real PITA for Microsoft.
No, Netscape chose a path too late. Far too late.
Their 4.x line of browsers sucked and was already loosing market share to IE. Then MS decided to give away IE making the switch from a sucky Netscape browser (which cost money at the time) to a free MS browser that was getting better with each release was a no-brainer.
The first NS browser that was able to compete with IE 5.0 and later was NS 6, which was based on an incomplete Mozilla.
Mozilla is the future for Netscape (either open source or branded) and it was the right decision IMHO, it just came WAY TOO LATE. By the time NS/Mozilla made the decision to ditch the old NS 4.X core MS had pretty much wrapped and won the browser wars.
Now, and with equal footing I hope that the NS 6/Mozilla line can re-gain marketshare from Microsoft. AOL should ditch IE in their AOL product and replace it with Mozilla/NS, but they can't because MS won't give them the special consideration (desktop placement and all) if they do.
If the many, many millions of AOL users suddenly started using NS/Mozilla (because it was switched out by the latest AOL upgrade) the world, browser wise would shape up to be a different landscape IMHO.
Palin...
He was tried once by two separate sovereign powers. No single power tried him twice.
This is a key difference between the American model and most other countries. In those countries there's one sovereign power that was originally tied to a monarch, and all of the subdivisions are mere administrative conveniences. All of the major laws (e.g., criminalizing murder or assault) are national.
In the US, each state is a sovereign power. Not only does each state implement it's "police powers" differently, the Federal government generally does *not* use police power with two exceptions. The first is serious crimes involving multiple states, the second is law enforcement on federal lands where local enforcement is undesirable (e.g., military bases, or to a smaller extent national parks).
This is why the modern crop of "conservatives" seem so... insane... to anyone with a sense of history. True conservatives would never support the federal government getting involved in small local crimes like possession of small amounts of drugs. They aren't even comfortable with the FBI being the lead agency in bank robberies, even if it's nominally because the banks are FDIC insured. (In truth, it's because the bank robbers of the 1930s fled across state borders and the feds were legitimately brought due to the interstate flight, but they decided to "streamline" the process and ended up creating a precedence.)
It's interesting to contrast this case (where the cops were charged with violating Rodney King's civil rights after acquittal in state court of other criminal charges) with Oklahoma trying to try Terry Nichols for murder because they don't think the federal life sentence is enough. They want a separate state trial solely so they can execute him.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
Netscape was faced with a rival that had an order of magnitude more resources and cut off their major source of revenue for development. As a result their browser became a buggy mess as they didn't have the time to do the decent development there were doing before.
What you say seems to make sense, but there's a question that shows a flaw in your argument - if Netscape couldn't afford to develop a decent, bug free browser with their resources, how is it that Opera, with less resources, has managed? How is it that Konquerer is a lot more useful and stable? Netscape has had a lot of time to get their program back together and they just haven't done it. They were stuck at 4.7 for the longest time, and it was a buggy mess. Their real problem was they didn't do a very good job on their product and they took a long time to realize they were at a developmental dead end and it was time to start over.
No, but there is something illegal about doing that and giving the result away if you're a monopoly.
You still don't get it; read the stories again. The laws are different for monopolies! Just because it would be legal for a non-monopoly doesn't necessarily mean it would be legal for a monopoly.
And in this case, Microsoft engaged in predatory pricing (giving the browser away). Whatever you might remember, Netscape was still charging for it's browser when Microsoft released IE for free (here's the only link I can find on short notice), so the fact that Microsoft spent all of this money and then gave the browser away made it illegal, no matter who did it. It's called predatory pricing, and Microsoft didn't invent it, they just brought it to the software world (although I'm sure others have done it there, too).
Please, if you're going to comment on whether Microsoft has broken the law, read the antitrust findings and find out exactly which laws Microsoft was convicted of breaking. Yes, convicted, not charged. They lost the antitrust suit, it was only the remedy that was sent back to the lower courts.
Learn the laws, and then make an informed post.
"If you had actually followed the events at the time, you'd know that the only reason Netscape "stumbled" was because Microsoft came along and put ten times more money into the development of IE while giving it away for free."
_ ni ghtmare.php
No, you obviously weren't around then to follow the events.
Netscape stumbled on a number of issues. They were arrogant and lost the contract for AOLs browser as a result.
They were arrogant and refused to work with the W3C standards body. Netscape 4.x was especially bad because they had lost a battle with the W3C over CSS and released a product which had major kludges in it.
Articles such as this one:
http://www.wowwebdesigns.com/power_guides/worst
Detail most of the problems that Netscape caused for themselves.
"As a result their browser became a buggy mess as they didn't have the time to do the decent development there were doing before. "
But somehow Microsoft had the time. Basically you are agreeing that Netscape's problems were caused because their developers were not as good. We should punish Microsoft because they are more competent?
Since when does that promote a competitive marketplace?