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Be Sues Microsoft for Violations of Antitrust Laws
Eugenia writes: "While Be, Inc had the information for over 3 years that Microsoft 'through a series of illegal exclusionary and anticompetitive acts designed to maintain its monopoly in the Intel-compatible PC operating system market and created exclusive dealing arrangements with PC OEMs prohibiting the sale of PCs with multiple preinstalled operating systems' they filed a suit against Microsoft only today. Today Be employes a single person in a tiny office in Mountain View. Great ..."
Should they change the name of the company to 'am' or 'is' since they only have one guy now? ;-)
I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate.
At least they won't have any problem demonstrating irreparable harm.
And the brethren went away edified.
Now that it's become popular for other companies to sue Microsoft, who will the next one be? Novell seems to be a possibility. IBM should for the same reason as Be, due to OS/2.
Today it employs only one person in a tiny office...
Sounds like you're wondering why they'd do so *now* of all times, when they can't do anything.
Easy: Nothing to lose. The company has nothing left. Normally it is unwise to sue MS. They'll just drag it on and you won't get a significant gain (i.e. Apple's suit), even if you do win. But now, the worst the spending can do is bankrupt them: which is basically where they stand now anyway. OTOH, the damages they could land could put Be back on its feet.
Sounds like the smartest option left to them.
Companies will do things like this after the game is over to try and get some nickels on the dollar for the VC's. I would expect them to settle for a low dollar amount.
After all, you can't bring back the dead, it's not like the murderer can make restitution, so let the murderer get away with it. No use prosecuting, just a waste of the prosecutor's time and taxpayers' taxes.
Infuriate left and right
Well, I wish the litigator success, because it would definitely be a boon for PC's sold today to come equipped with more than one OS. However, nobody put a gun to the head of the OEM's who produced single system PC's. To win this case, you would need to demonstrate that the contracts between Microsoft and OEM's violated antitrust laws. Quite frankly, I doubt that this could be shown. Despite the finding of fact in the antitrust lawsuit, you would have to show that it was impossible or next to impossible for OEM's to sell PC's with alternate OS's.
But Dell has been able to sell Linux (which apparently they dropped, but don't worry, HP is now selling them). And other PC companies have been able to do the same (albeit in limited numbers).
To prove that it was impossible for OEM's to sell PC's with alternate OS's, you would need to demonstrate some sort of collusion between Microsoft and Intel, making it difficult for developers to produce alternate OS's on Intel CPU's. That clearly has not happened. The x86 Intel platform certainly didn't hinder kernel development, and Intel has been relatively open about publishing specs.
Good luck Be. Truly, I feel your pain.
Robert Nagle Idiotprogrammer
Austin, Texas, idiotprogrammer, Technical writer
Robert Nagle, Idiotprogrammer, Houston
I fully agree with Be's suit.
Microsoft hit BeOS hard with the release of Windows Me. You see, BeOS PE needed a way to exit Windows without shutting down. This was possible in Win 95 and Win 98, but removed in Win Me.
Microsoft never gave a reason for this, and it is assumed that MS made this change to restrict other OSes from running along side of Windows.
Microsoft's strong-arm tactics in OEM licensing also hit Be hard. Many companies were going to start shipping BeOS machines, but they noticed a clause in their license that would require the purchase of a Windows license, even though Windows would not be used. This would be very costly, so the OEM BeOS idea failed.
Some have said that the size of Be will hurt them. I diagree. Think from the jury's point of view.
You see one large company against one man. That one man used to be a large company, but the other large company killed it.
It is just this kind of tale that will help Be the most in the courtroom.
-twb
Allegedly Palm is using the Be technology as the basis for their next OS. The current Palm OS can't really do the type of things that, thanks to Microsoft et. al, everyone thinks a handheld device needs to do.
Also don't think that even if they get some money, they will return as a viable software company. More likely any money they get will go to their creditors.
"(Man) tries to live his own life as if he were telling a story. But you have to choose: live or tell." --Sartre
I for one am glad that Be is sueing Microsoft, and I don't think it's as futile as some think either. If you read the article, the entire suit is based on the destruction of Be, majority of it because Be was unable to get PC OEM's to install Be on PC's they sold because license agreements with Microsoft prohibited that from taking place, else they violate their agreement with Microsoft, and will not be allowed to install Windows on any machines. You cannot get anymore anti-competitive. Plus, with only a single person left in the company, and 99% of its assets sold off, you can't get anymore proof the business was indeed destroyed. The burden on Be now is to prove that is was indeed largely Microsoft's fault and not other elements such as poor business plan, or a product the market didn't need. Hopefully it'll get more press coverage, this should continue to help prove to the average Joe Windows that Microsoft didn't get where they are today because they make a good product.
..There's a-dooin's a-transpirin'
Due to the conviction of Microsoft as an abusive monopoly and the many businesses they have destroyed more suits will likely emerge. The fact that Microsoft will battle multiple fronts will probably make it easier to win a suit. When Sun, DOJ, Be and AOL togheter pull resources in different directions it will be hard to focus. This will encourage more stomped companies to file aswell. I think that this also has a good side effect, that is open source will maybe have a window of opportunity to thrive. Microsoft will have their hands full for a while now, especially if IBM and other joins the fight.
HTTP/1.1 400
Elizabeth sits in a closet now
and the blissful memories fade
visions of objects and mime-types
and the neat little scripts that i made
Hope for the future has past
from my elegant blue Beth
to various *n*x machines
what little hope I have left
For as much as gnu's full of bounty
and the empire looks to fall from it's hill
I remember a time that was simpler
only a BeBox my wish could fulfill
There's a fantastic book out there called the 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing. It's a fascinating read and contains many case studies to back up these "Laws".
The place for #3 in any market is always small, but obtainable. Linux now owns this space in the desktop OS market (with Apple being #2). Be failed to really develop themselves and build what is known as "mind share". How many people have even HEARD of Be? Not many.
As entertaining as it might be to generate conspiracy theories that somehow the big evil M$ "kept them down", there are other more down-to-earth reasons why Be has always been doomed.
Linux squashed Be. This is because Linux caught onto a market wave as it was happening (the open source movement).. Be tried to catch on to this as well but it was too little too late.
mje0w!!!1!
When Be had an agreement to ship pre-installed on laptops from a major distributor (I forget, was it HP?) Microsoft stepped in and said "did you read your license agreement? You can install other operating systems if you want, but you cannot boot from them or display how to get to them." So the machines shipped with Be installed, but most people never knew it. This cost Be quite a bit of money.
They tried to get the DoJ to use this in the antitrust trial, but the DoJ said that their case was for illigal tying, not for exclusionary agreements. DoJ urged Be to go to trial separately.
When BeOS was purchased not too long ago, they reserved the right to sue MS based on the judgement of the court in the DoJ trial. Since it appears that the DoJ sold out, Be is finally doing what they should have done earlier.
Better late than never. Good luck, Be!
Ultimately what will bring down Microsoft isn't any sort of half-baked government settlement. What will doom them is having to fight a ton of little court battles against every company who ever thought about competing against them. Even if they win a lot of these cases, the pure distraction of having to fend off all these suits is going to hurt them.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
Even worse, the beast may have infringed on Be's trademarks.
According to legal opinion in Redmond, "Lindows" may confuse consumers into thinking they're getting "Windows". So switching the first letter of your product name with that of another player is bad, right?
Well, "Be" only had two letters to begin with, and MS went and took one of them for their shiny new consumer OS! It's like the David and Bathsheba of the software world. Truly shocking.
microsoftword.mp3 - it doesn't care that they're not words...
Of course he is. Dan Johnston, longtime general counsel for Be, is now the CEO (and receptionist, and IT staff).
Be is one of the few companies that genuinely do have a case, me thinks. With browsers the situation is bit convoluted (no one ever made money selling browsers). With BeOS, Be had snowball's chance in hell getting h/w manufacturer's to pre-install the OS because of Microsoft's strong arm tactics. Consumers didn't get to choose... perhaps they wouldn't have wanted BeOS in any case, but MS didn't want to take a chance. Of course MS didn't just fight BeOS but all potential competitors... Be just happens to be the one that had closest match on intel hardware (for 'normal' consumers).
Oh and yes, these tactics were hardly "tiny little thing" that Microsoft "didn't even know it was doing"... the whole industry has known about this for years now... but big names (Dell, Gateway et al) have been too scared of Don Bill to publicly complain (and/or greedy and content with status quo... they just sell hardware, OS is just a tax they have to pay)
I like paying taxes. With them I buy civilization -- Oliver Wendell Holmes
The problem wasn't that OEM's couldn't offer another OS, it was the fine print that said if you offered Windows, you couldn't make any changes to the boot loader. Hitachi had a PC, the Flora Prius, that had BeOS installed on a seperate partition, but in order to use it, there were instructions you could get online to make it bootable. Good article on it here.
I think people are missing the brilliance of this tactic. Yes, Be is no more. It has ceased to Be. (haha) However, they are illustrating the WHOLE POINT of suing by being out of business.
What better way to illustrate a Monopoly that prohibited vendors from bundling competing products, therby limiting the market and competition to any Microsoft monopoly, than to be a competing product driven out of business by the same monopoly?
Now, as long as they can afford the legal fee's, they may actually have a chance at illsutrating WHY MS should be broken up, and WHY MS IS a monopoly in the truest sense of the word.
You keep going until you die..."Me".
And, as we all know, Microsoft is expert in taking our back ends.
Consider that they may have purchased Be only to use it as a battering ram against Microsoft and all this time tossed it a carrot here and there and finally closed it down after suffering enough losses to look good in court. Depending on how the judge decides to view this it may work, it may not, or Microsoft may just say, "How much do you want to shut up and go away?", and settle out of court.
A sad end for Be, anyway, particularly after watching something like this happen to my prior employer. The name may be the same, but there's a different soul, not to be trusted as the old one was.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
The fact of the matter is, only a small percentage of people even want to use these fringe products. Why punish Microsoft for that?
This would be compelling if it were truthful.
The reality is that people would like alternatives to using Microsoft, but Microsoft has done everything it can to prevent Dell, HP, Compaq and others from presenting options to their customers.
The other OSes aren't getting to play on a level playing field. BeOS was a very slick OS, it had all the features that most users would want and was very user-friendly. And it never had a chance, because people weren't exposed to it. They didn't have the marketing dollars to promote it to the average computer user and they couldn't get it on PCs made by the big PC manufacturers because Microsoft did everything they could to prevent it.
I'm sure that there are people who would still buy Windows if Dell offered BeOS computers -- but the number of people who would have chosen BeOS would probably surprise you -- had they ever been offered and promoted.
If you're technically apt enough to build your own computer, you can go with an alternative OS. But the customers who want to buy a premade computer from a major manufacturer don't get a choice. Many PC manufacturers have shown interest in having a product line that doesn't include Windows -- and they've been slapped down with exclusive licensing agreements and price dis-incentives from M$ for trying to offer non M$ products.
That's why M$ should be punished. Harshly.
From the early license agreements, Netscape was free for educational use. Businesses and personal non-educational use required you to pay for the license. I remember seeing boxed copies for sale all over the place back in 1995. It was available for nearly every flavor of *NIX, Mac, and Winblowz. They sold the "killer app" that made the web a household name. There's no reason they couldn't still be licensing Navigator to this day; except for one: Microshaft's fear.
Microshaft pissed in the punchbowl. They dumped an inferior web browser (everything before IE 3.0 was a joke) on consumers and killed of what could have been a serious cash cow. They did this because they couldn't compete on any real merit (typical Microsoft there) so they undercut the competion on price relying on the OS monopoly to fund the dumping untill they drove the competitor out. They did this with word processors, and spreadsheets if you ever stop to wonder what happened to WordPerfect and Lotus 123. The OS monopoly funds screw-up after screw-up of crappy versions and learning while eating into the competitors customer base with cheap prices. By the time version 3 is out, they've cought up. This "business strategy" works great if you've got the cash to burn and nobody to answer to for doing it since smaller companies don't get to spend years screwing up at least three times .
My point is this: Netscape's complaint is more than legit. Microsoft's monopoly/preditory practices go way further than Netscape or BeOS as well. With the finding of facts to go on, over $20,000,000,000.00USD (yes folks, that's over TWENTY BILLION in the bank), a huge list of enemies, a corporate culture of arrogance, and the current economic slump, they're a prime target to get swamped with lawsuits for the next 5 to 10 years.
It's been a long time coming, they more than deserve it, and I for one am looking forward to watching the show.
*** Sigs are a stupid waste of bandwidth.
I wish that were the case!!! I *have* to use MS products. The professional audio products I use won't work with any other OS. My employer requires that I use IE in Windows to access my email when I'm on call, else I have to drive into the office 1 1/2 hours away. People with whom I do business need the compatibility that comes with MS.
I love BeOS intensely. I still have it installed, and I use it, but I still have to have MS. Why is that? It's not because they make a better product, not because they have better marketing (though that helped...), but because they established an illegal monopoly. I'm stuck because they broke the law.
That's why they should be punished. I just wish I could sue them myself. But I'll settle for a painful lawsuit from Be.
Signing exclusive agreements is NOT illegal!
This has been covered extensively in the antitrust decision (which, BTW, was upheld unanimously by 9 appelate judges). The exclusive agreements are illegal when you have a monopoly in that particular market. Microsoft has a monopoly in the OS market. (*) Therefore, the exclusive agreemets are illegal. End of story. You'd do well to actually get a clue before spouting nonsense.
(*) Oh, and before some moron decides to beat the "MS is not a monopoly" horse, I will not argue with that. I'll merely point out that the district judge and 9 appellate judges disagree with you. And they probably understand the laws a bit better than you.
___
If you think big enough, you'll never have to do it.
If I were an OEM, I could install both Linux and Windows on the same machine, and be able to offer my customers a simple multi-boot solution without having to modify the boot sector at all. It's called a boot disk. Insert this disk when you want to boot to Linux. The disk contains nothing more than SysLinux, which is set up to boot the linux partition off of the harddrive. There, OEM License problem is solved.
Then just put a little icon on the Linux desktops. "Tire of using a floppy to boot linux?" Curious users will click it, and it will Druid them right through installing a multiOS bootloader on their harddrive. Probably LILO or GRUB. And voila, you're done.
Of course, most OEMs aren't too bright when it comes to getting around license restrictions. The legal departments tend to jump onto the MS bandwagon pretty quickly since it's been their bread and butter for so long.
I am so tired of the following arguments:
1)You can't blame Microsoft for running a business for profits
2)You can't blame vendors for wanting to sell to largest majority
3)MS is simply giving the consumers what they want
etc. etc.
LISTEN: It doesn't matter if you are anti-MS, a VB Developer or Linus himself - Microsoft is a monopoly. It "earned" it's position in the marketplace through illegal practices.
It broke the law. It didn't do this yesterday, or a couple days ago, it's been doing it for years, ever since it came to be. All of the above arguments for "get off Microsoft's back" are invalid by means of history. The current industry landscape wasn't anyone's choice - it's the result of a crime.
"vendors install MS because they know people will buy it"
No, vendors install MS because MS has a monopoly on the OS market, giving them LITTLE CHOICE. This isn't conspiracy theory, it's fact.
Let Be sue Microsoft. We all should be suing Microsoft. How many hours of productivity have we lost to operating system which stole the industry? How much money have we given Microsoft without having a choice of where to spend it?
This isn't a "Microsoft sucks" thing - it's a "Microsoft broke the law" thing. Just because the Bush administration asked the DOJ to back down doesn't mean it wasn't illegal. They were still found guilty.
Thanks to this, we have Windows. We have an OS based on business, not technology. We the government buying it droves, which not only makes our national security at risk, but has actually caused battleships to "crash" (Anyone else remember the "smartship" that had to be dragged back to dock thanks to NT?)
Nobody should be letting Microsoft off early, especially Windows users. Imagine how much better Windows would be if they had a little competition to keep them busy?
inky
The OEM Licensing agreement you are refering to is considered a trade secret. NOBODY but the legal teams at the OEMS are allowed to read it. Your idea assumes that the licensing agreement doesn't explicitly exclude the "loophole" you described.
Okay, giving your idea the benefit of the doubt, Microsoft's OEM licensing agreements are contingent on the whim of Microsoft. If an OEM, and I'm not talking about Joe OEM, I'm talking about the big names, Gateway, Compaq, Dell, even look at Microsoft crosseyed, Microsoft may yoink their OEM license agreement, which would subsequently mean immediate death to said OEM. They can't afford to sell computers if they aquire Windows at a retail price. This means that Microsoft has a lot of leverage outside of their exclusionary licensing agreement that does not leave a lot of room for OEMs to be "creative".
This topic is what Be's complaint is about. When Compaq announced that they were going to market a Internet Applicance running Be's BeIA, well, read this quote from Be's complaint:
Microsoft used monopoly illegaly (tried and convicted by the highest appeals court). Their control over OEMs extends past their written contracts.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/7/24134.html
0 001/0827_hacker.html Byte's take on the bootloader issue.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/21410.html The register's summary of this Byte article:
http://www.byte.com/documents/s=1115/byt20010824s
daniel teske
I think your tin-foil hat is out of alignment there buddy...
"While Be, Inc had the information for over 3 years [..snip..] they filed a suit against Microsoft only today."
If you read the press statement, it's for "for the destruction of Be's business". It would have been fairly hard for Be to sue Microsoft for destruction of their business three years before Microsoft had finally destroyed their business.
When you're trying desperately to stay afloat and keep your shareholders on board, the last thing you do is publicly sue someone for having irreparably harmed you. Admitting that you're sunk simply guarantees you'll lose whatever remaining chances you have.
Actually, Be did exactly this. I know, because I wrote some of the docs for it.
And guess what? It didn't work.
The fact is, sticking in a floppy and a sheet of paper is vastly inferior to having the software appear in front of the user when they boot.
So, you can get around the letter of the license agreement with this tactic, but you can't get the same market leverage. And it's market leverage that pays the bills, not a "clever" legal trick.
I recall all the articles posted to slashdot about BeOS, and how nearly every one of them was greeted by jeers and disgust.
/. masses.
:-)
"Be wasn't free, it wasn't open source. Who wants to use that crap anyway?" was the response of the
Now the slashdot masses want to complain that Microsoft killed Be?
This is hilarious.
This reminds me of Nextwave in a lot of ways.
BG: Nextwave was the company who bought the spectrum many of the cellular companies are deploying new services on. Well they didn't pay their bills and the FCC took back the spectrum and reauctioned it. Nextwave sued the FCC for taking it away and it dragged through court for about three years and Nextwave won. Now their worth a TON of money because, the Cingulars and Verizon's of the world already have service. Guess who the FCC has to buy from to get the spectrum back.
Now let's apply this to the current situation. Be is currently worth about 4.4 million total right now in stock. Since the company doesn't really have any debt anymore roughly $1.5 million with most of that in current liabilities so the company is close to $3 million total.
Roughly 130 million computers (got this off a CNN article correct if wrong) were sold last year. Now watch this. Judge finds that Be was killed by Microsoft. Take the previous two years of sales will say 225 million PCs. Judge says 150 million (round ball) were shipped by OEMs and Be considering its size would not be have penetrated no more then 2% of the market. That means they could have put their OS on 3 million computers. Ok, let's now say Be charged $25 for each copy (below MS because they are trying to gain market share and they will be considered an inferior product to most of the marketplace). Now we have at least a verdict of $75 million or roughly a 17x the current stock price. Of course Be is a penny stock at 12 cents and they very well could lose the case but if you got money that you would take to Vegas it might be worth a shot.
BTW, we haven't even talked about the chance for punitive damages and if MS lost the case and decided to settle you could be looking at handsome pay day.
HT
Couldn't agree more... how can they be punished for being a monopoly when they legally *weren't* a monopoly until the court ruled them one? Since there's no standard for what makes a software monopoly, how was MS supposed to know when they became one?
It might seem pedantic, but think about it -- nowhere else in the law (that I'm aware of) can you be punished retroactively to before your infraction was established.
Your example is meaningless. Sony is NOT a monopoly. Microsoft is. This makes ALL the difference. The abuse of that monopoly IS illegal under US law. Deal with it.
Abuse of monopoly power to crush potential competition is what we are talking about here, not Be's advertising ability. OS/2 was killed the same way Be was killed, and Linux is being hurt as well (Linux adoption would be MUCH faster if it was available to all as a dual boot option.)
Claiming that MS did nothing wrong is bullshit. This is a cut and dried case.
Palm does not own Be. Be sold its assest to Palm.
Be, Inc did negotiate a preload deal, with a big vendor. The product actually did ship in limited quantities, after it got Microsoft'ed.
Be, Inc. and Hitachi created the Prius 1, and neat little desktop for the Japanese market. It was going to be a dual boot, Windows 98, BeOS box, with the 2 operating systems side by side. Before it shipped however, Microsoft evidently went in an played hardball, forcing the preload to be modified in such a way that the BeOS bootloader couldn't be displayed until after Windows was running, and even then it was buried in a menu in the programs folder of the start menu. Now considering that most users don't even know how to get to the calculator, this is pretty much a death knell. The deal fell apart a couple months later.
Now I'm not an insider to either company, but I've been around the industry and I've had enough exposure to make an educated guess about what happened. It probably went something like this.
1. Be makes press release announcing deal and is queitly nearing deals with at least one major US Vendor, probably Gateway or Compaq.
2. MS low level staffer tasked with watching the press wire sees the announcement and shuffles it into the channel for 'handling'
3. Hitachi and Be spend a month or so working out the technical details and prepare the machine for shipping.
4. The press release finally gets to the upper management at MS and the marketing and account relations machine goes into action. Considering Hitachi's size and volume in the the Pacific Rim, Steve Ballmer gets on a the phone with Hitachi's president and explains the 'hidden' costs of this preload deal. Namely no more discounts on MS Office, and discounted price of Windows just tripled. And oh yeah, if you reread your contract the we signed with you, Windows boot process cannot be alter in these methods. You are going to have to do it our way.
5. Hitachi cannot fight this in a market that is operating on increasingly tight margins.
6. MS sends out a private reminder of the preload agreement's fine print regarding bootloaders and dual booting non Windows Operating Systems. This effectively closes the US Vendor deals and seals Be's fate.
7. Be begins the 'Focus Shift', attempting to invade the only market left open to them.
8. Be discovers that the market that appeared open to them has a couple of entrenched players, and one entering the market that has assets and marketing to kill them.
9. Be runs low on cash and begins the liquidation process.
10. Part of the exit strategy is to liquidate all assets and IP, then using the entity, sue the snot out of MS.
11. This would pave the way for Palm or whomever to then invade the x86 market once again.
On a side note, as brilliant as Apple's Mac OS X is, all the furor about bringing to x86 presents the exact same stumbling blocks, and make it therefore a 'Bad Idea' (tm).
Andy Satori
dru@druware.com
Actually, didn't Be once make headlines by offering to give its operating system for free to any PC vendor who would sell BeOS preinstalled on its PC's? Either as the sole operating system on its PC's, or set up as a dual-boot with Windows?
Still nobody took Be up on it. Even adding a free operating system to their PC's would have incurred so many penalties from Microsoft that no PC vendor wanted to take the hit.
Let me be the first to say that this is a pointless remark. Exposure, sure as h*ll can be free. More power to the companies that can make use of free exposure for their products.
But companies like Microsoft force feed it to you with rhetoric that causes the average consumer to become dizzy enough to buy their products for fear of the uncertain.
As a card carrying member of the 'John Q. Public Consumer Guild', I've wised up to the flashy and pushy advertisements for products. I've learned to look past all that and try to understand how the product really works. There will be more consumers like me in the near future. Pretty soon flashy advertising won't work anymore. Then Microsoft will have to stand on their own merits.
BeOS may have been a day late and dollar short, but they did set a precidence that all consumers may not be aware of now, but will be soon. Then you'll see future 'BeOS' getting a fair chance due to free exposure.
Maybe someday a new advertising concept of some sort will come out and will be licensed as GPL or BSD-like to offer the free chance these companies need on a fair playfield.
Seriously, MS has already been found guilty of being a monopoly.
I'm kind of nitpicking words here, but being a monopoly is not something you're found guilty of. Being a monopoly isn't a crime.
I remember so many PC makers who tried to offer Be on a pc till Microsoft totally went agro on the makers and made them stop.
I did hear something about this, but I didn't thing there were many, or that they were big companies. The reason computer companies would want to offer BeOS on their computers is to differentiate them from the competition. The downside of offering it is support costs. Don't underestimate how much supporting BeOS would cost a big name manufacturer. They contract out their support, and every call cuts into their low profit margins. Training a support staff enough to be useful on BeOS would be an expensive task, and the contractors are going to pass that price on to the computer companies.
BE never had a chance, and the OS from my point of view was incredible.
I never used BeOS, but it would have to be truely incredible to have even a slight chance. Most people with computers want the same OS that everyone else is using. That fact is the true barrier to entry for new OSs. I've heard from some people that BeOS definately shined in some areas, but even if Microsoft just ignored it, I doubt it stood a chance. Microsoft has a monopoly because they won the first round of the PC OS wars, and the nature of the OS business is that it works out easiest for everyone it they're all using the same one. Microsoft also doesn't sit still. They constantly work to make Windows better. They definately don't do that flawlessly, but they have definately done an exellent job on making their user interface easy to use, and they keep working on making it better.
Be may very well have a case. Microsoft may very well abused it's monopoly position out of paranoia. However, it's unlikely that the damages are in the billions if they are guilty. It's more likely that they crushed a niche OS that may have been able to make millions more. If they did that, they should be punished, and the damages trippled acording to law.
In the short run, a lot of economy professors will be making money as expert witnesses, and lawyers will get rich.