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Gates Testifies in Antitrust Suit

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the man-takes-the-stand dept.

teamhasnoi writes "Bill Gates is testifying today in the Microsoft antitrust case. Here's the 5 page executive summary (pdf) and here's the 163-page full version (1.1 MB pdf). Bill waxes on about the early days, talks about .NET, xml, and why Microsoft should not be penalized for its role as 800 lb. Gorilla. (Developers, Developers, Developers)" Other readers point to the BBC story on Gates' testimony, as well as a similar one at Yahoo!.

1 of 455 comments (clear)

  1. A Burr up the collective asses of the states. by Sabalon · · Score: 1, Troll

    So today Bill Gates testified...I may actually read all 163 pages of his testimony.

    I just don't get what they expect to get out of this. All the states in it are so damned concerned about MS releasing a version of Windows without IE.

    SO FUCKING WHAT?

    First off - does anyone really think that a vendor is gonna replace IE or the MS-HTML rendering engine with a piece-of-has-been like Netscape?

    Second, why don't the vendors just do it already? Remove the IE icon from the desktop, start bar, etc... and put Netscape or something else on there?

    Why - it's not because Windows isn't modular - anyone can do the above. It's because the vendors have signed contracts with MS saying for the deep discounts they are not allowed to remove IE or put NS on, or any of that.

    So instead of going after MS and their contracts, the states are gonna force MS to produce a version of windows without IE, so the vendors can license it instead of Windows with IE just so they can put something other than IE on there.

    And ya know what - I bet that the price point will be so wrong that the vendors will instead still license the regular version of Windows with IE because MS won't offer a contract for the other version that is cost-efficiant for the vendors.

    Does anyone here remember what Windows was like 8-10 years ago? It was a fuckin mess.

    While I fully agree that MS has the ability to add things to the OS to squish competition:
    - the MS stuff is usually better than the competition - sad but true
    - what's next? Now it's HTML. What if some company comes along and claims that MS is killing their market for lightweight text editors (Wordpad/Notepad) or add-on file systems, or memory management. Where does it stop?

    And who filed this suit? It started out as a US antitrust suit, and the US backed off. Now the states are going at it - thirsty for blood I guess. I could see if Netscape filed a suit, but I don't buy the state's argument of the consumer being hurt. The consumer gets a stable suite (well...stable compared to a patchwork of OS, applications from different vendors, etc...) that is very intergrated.

    Yes - Microsoft have a monopoly, but only because all these vendors signed into these contracts with them that further promoted MS products. Adding a browser to the OS did not use their monopoly status to force others out of the market.
    Adding a few lines to a contract did.