Microsoft Settles Be Antitrust Suit for $23.25M

ewhac writes "Without admitting wrongdoing, Microsoft today agreed to pay $23,250,000 to Be, Inc., to settle anti-trust claims against the software giant. The payout is anticipated to be used to complete the orderly dissolution of the company. Shortly after announcing sale of key assets to Palm, Be, Inc., filed suit against Microsoft in February 2002, alleging destruction of its business via illegal exclusionary and anti-competitive business practices."

Comments

Microsoft Owns yahoo?

[MyDixieWrecked]

The ending paragraph of that article is disturbing to say the least. Founded in 1975, Microsoft is the worldwide leader in software, services and Internet technologies for personal and business computing. The company offers a wide range of products and services designed to empower people through great software -- any time, any place and on any device. pshhhh... right. ;)

Now that's justice...

[fork420]

To put this in perspective, consider the following math:

$8,072,000,000 net income for MSFT during the 9 months ended 3/31/03
divided by the (roughly) 270 days during the 9 months ended 3/31/03
...yields $29,000,000 net income per day for MSFT

so basically they destroyed Be, Inc., and it cost them roughly 18 *hours* of income.

just lovely :-/

Re:Drop in the bucket

[jhylkema]

True, but you must understand that this is yet another chink in their armor. Once-invulnerable Microsoft has now had to settle a number of actions such as this. What they really didn't want was a full-dress jury trial where all of what Microsoft did to them would have been fleshed out for all to see.

What's more, it's very telling that a company with Microsoft's resources would settle rather than fight and "clear our name."

Does little to improve OS diversity

[Shinzaburo]

It's great that Be's shareholders get a few dollars back for their pains, but they still certainly didn't come out ahead. But the real tragedy isn't the way about the investors -- it's about the millions of people who could have benefited from Be's amazing and innovative software, had Be been allowed to compete on anything remotely resembling a level playing field.

Hopefully more and more of Be's innovations will end up in Mac OS X and Linux. Then Be's achievements won't have been for naught.

Re:MS employee karma

[pitr256]

This is so true of most emplyees who work at Microsoft. I myself worked there for about three months in a sysadmin support type function and even with the Code Red outbreak crashing the internal Microsoft network to the point where even the call center couldn't route calls to support agents, they kept saying, "Microsoft is the greatest! Damn hackers did this."

I got the fscking out of there before being assimilated.

Be should not have accepted.

[Jerk City Troll]

Whenever someone brings suit against Microsoft, they always try to settle. There is no court proceedings in which facts will become public record. There is no innocent or guilty verdict. It's all very quiet, subtle, and quickly brushed aside from peoples' view and memory.

Reading the Complaint, Be appears to have had a very strong case. I cannot believe they would actually lose in court again Microsoft. (Then again, Microsoft do have an army of lawyers and unlimited monetary resources at their disposal.) By accepting this settlement, they do not demonstrate Microsoft had engaged in any wrong-doing. By all accounts, a mere 23 million is nothing to Microsoft and they come out as the winners.

Shame on you, Be. Why doesn't anyone actually take a stand these days? Microsoft says: "here's a lollipop, now shut the fuck up." People, unfortunately, take it without any consideration for the public good in the long-term.

Sounds like the solution...

[MickLinux]

... is the 2-click-insert-good-floppy-and-go-to-lunch Default Debian Install.

Essentially, first click downloads the install program. Second click confirms "Do you want to run this, and install Debian as an alternate OS?" Most of the program then downloads off the internet.

Then, the program (1) Loads all system information that it can, into a file
(2) Loads the basic program onto the hard drive, plus all required debs, and checks the hashes.
(3) Installs startup program in Windows that gives the user an option "Would you like to change your default bootup setting to Linux? (Y/N/Don't ask again)"
(4) runs ScanDisk to clean the disk
(5) runs Defrag to defrag it.
(6) rewrites the floppy with a boot disk, and boots into Linux
(7) Partitions a standard user configuration onto the HDD (or onto the alternate HDD, if you so select, thus removing the need for repartitioning)
(8) Installs the Debs
(9) Installs LILO, with 20-second timeout, and default option being Windows bootup (the polite option).
(10) Sets a waiting screen "Your Debian Linux System is Installed. Please hit any key to reboot to Windows, or 'L' to continue with Linux for now, and explore your new OS!."

Such a system should also have a kind of "new hardware" wizard which reports back any new hardware that Debian developers have never seen.

It should also have an "Error Reporting" wizard, such that if the installation process fails, then when you return to Windows you have the option, "Report Error?"

Re:It is suggested

[Jon Abbott]

DR-DOS was a product that was actually selling for a long time, and was even being pre-loaded before MS killed them with shonky license deals.

Not only were they killed by bad licensing deals, they were killed when Microsoft added code to Windows 3.x which made installing it on DR-DOS impossible. The code was along the lines of:

1. run "ver"
2. check for "MS" in output string
3. if "MS" is not found, give a vaguely worded error, and don't install Windows

And people wonder why I don't like Microsoft...