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A Look at Microsoft's Regulatory Problems
jrexilius writes: "The Economist has a great article on the state of the EUs anti-trust case against microsoft, background, and future troubles with google. One interesting comment was 'Microsoft is preparing to use its dominance in web-browser and operating-system software to promote itself in yet another separate market--search engines this time'."
This is exactly what REALLY ticked me off with them (in the IT adm position no less). I put up with their marginal quality on the desktop up until this point. Sure, part of me still wished I had gone OS/2 there as well, but I digress. I certainly still remember buying PC's that I had to pay the Windows tax on ... even though they still run Linux to this day (except one actually which is one of the Netware servers).
Microsoft may some day conclude that the costs of constant regulatory battles--legal costs, fines, bad publicity, and bad relationships with governments--exceed the benefits of its Windows monopoly.
One can only hope. In the mean time it's still Linux in the data-centers and my basement for that matter. OS.X on my desktop, thank you very much. And yes, they talk NFS and not SMB with each other as well. It's faster... You know what I've learned at the offices that have agreed to run Linux and/or Mac's? Within one year it's obviously cheaper and faster than before. Almost ironical after reading all the Microsoft funded ROI type studies showing the exact oppisite. I thought something smelled fishy.
Don't be so sure about Google--people also once said the same things you are saying about Netscape.
Microsoft isn't a monopoly, per say, they're just really successful. If Microsoft were truly a monopoly you would only be running your Microsoft applications on your Microsoft operating system that was running on your Microsoft hardware. Back when Ma Bell existed, you couldn't even buy your own phone, you had to lease it from the phone company...now that's a monopoly. Microsoft may be market dominant, but they're not the only choice out there. You can always put linux, os2, beos, or whatever else on your pc. You can run 3rd party applications on your windows operating system. Plus, no one's forcing you to use it.
slashdot, news for crazed liberal socialist zealots
In the last few years there has been a lot of hype, at least with business folks, that Web sites like Yahoo, Google, MSN, Netscape would become big "Portals." on the Internet, driving all others into obscurity. It sounds like Microsoft to a certain extent may still believe this. You control the results of the search, you are in a position to profit from it. To quote the certain to come business advice:
(1) Leverage monopoly to get into search engine business
(2) ??
(3) Profit!
What I've seen in practice however, is quite different. It seems as if the new users tend to get sucked into the "portal" concept when they sign up with Earthlink, MSN, etc. But as they become more Internet savvy, they migrate and spend less and less time on those sites. It's like a giant ponzi scheme... once they run out of new people to sign up, they're done.
I guess with the speed of the tech cycle right now, If Microsoft profits off of something like this for even a couple of years, then it's worth it (well, duh... Hmmm... case of the painfully obvious this morning.) Bottom line though, I think at this point Microsoft is still coming in well above negatives like costs to litigate, negative regulatory environments, bad feelings, slashdot insults, etc. Microsoft is a business, bottom line, as soon as it gets more expensive to work this way... they'll change strategies. As long as this is working, which it obviously is, they'll stick with it even if God himself came down and said stop.
"...The mice will see you now..."
But it's like this:
You know your box is "sick/ill", it spreads virii!
I can see the "infected" pass by in my serverlogs(they don't hurt me, I got a good imune system).
lets take this a little further:
Note:some maybe pesonally insulted by this analogie!
If I had AIDS and I would go fucking around without a condom, what would you think of me?
Thats about how I think of people who know their box is "sick/ill" and still use it for their everyday tasks.
needless to say this applies to most people cause most people know M$ spreads virii.
( I do not mind if you use it off line, but whenever you connect make sure you are protected, virii create a lot of useless traffic, on top of that everybody needs to update their virii progs, which results in even more traffic.
guess who makes money out of all this!?!)
As soon as Linux is ready for the desktop, Microsoft is going to hell. Nobody is going to want to pay for software let alone software which is strictly limited in variety. If Microsoft was smart, they would stop trying to suck every penny out of every company, and start producing software which doesnt limit a users choice. And with DRM in Longhorn, there is going to be even more incentive to migrate to Linux.
If the dollar is an "I owe you nothing", then the Euro is a "Who owes you nothing." - Doug Casey
Parent has a point. While there are things I both like and dislike about Microsoft, I do get kinda sick and tired of seeing a story get posted on /. every time Bill Gates picks his nose in public, or something equally inane.
/.
Yes, we're all aware of Microsoft's business practices. Yes, we're all aware of the faults in their OS code. No, I don't want to hear about it every FREAKIN' five minutes. Also, if there is such interest in Microsoft, why don't we ever hear about the good things that they do (save your "because they don't do any good things" replies)?
Take ASP.NET, for example. I've worked with JSP/Servlets, PHP, and "old-school" ASP, and nothing is better or easier to work with than ASP.NET, IMHO. Before you bad-mouth it, why don't you actually try using it? Plus, if it sucked as bad as some people on this site claim, why would Ximian, et. al. be working so hard on Mono?
All I'm saying is that there should be credit where credit is due, and that it would be nice if every nitpick associated with Microsoft didn't rate a new topic on
I know, wishful thinking.
In Soviet Russia, Chuck Norris will still kick your ass.
I don't think they 'won' the battle with the US courts, I think they bought the president.
I can't think of much nice to say about Bush, but the Appeal's Court reversal of the break up of Microsoft was handed down in June 2001, only 6 months after Bush took office. Considering that the decision was made by appointed judges -- none of whom (AFAIK, but I'm almost positive) were appointed by Bush -- and not by the federal prosecutors or any other arm of the executive branch, I'd say that it's highly unlikely that the change of president had anything to do with this.
IMHO, politicians are corrupt (or not) regardless of ideologoy/party affiliation, but I have a slightly higher opinion of our appointed-for-life judges who don't have to answer to any special interests once they're on the bench. I don't agree with the decision to overrule the break-up of Microsoft, but I don't believe that it had anything to do with politics or bribery (insulation from the policital process does not guarantee competency, after all).
The bigotry of the nonbeliever is for me nearly as funny as the bigotry of the believer. - Albert Einstein
I am not going to debate the truth of this article.
However we hear the same thing over and over.
So I cannot begin to hold MS completely blameless.
What I cannot understand is at this point, with their huge advantage just in cash reserves, why they cannot just do the work and make the best products.
The potential they have to really do something awesome when put in contrast to their actual tactics it's just sad.
The thing that I think most Portal Pushers miss is the difference between having content and pointing to content. New users eventually learn where the content is - even if it's just from having hundreds of bookmarks - even if they're not internet or computer savvy. By repetition even my grandma can now get to google for searching and the new york times website by typing "nyt.com" into the title bar. This is the same woman who calls me every power outage to figure out what button to push to get the "tv-part" back on. To make it work they need more than just the search engines, they need to provide the content. AOL, MSN, and the like just don't provide enough good, unique content to be worth it. IMO.
To make an excellent indexing, searching, and categorizing group (read: Portal) and top-notch content providers (read: everybody else) would be extremely difficult, very expensive, and kludgy/unwieldy. Most of the best content is started by hobbyists and is community-supported -- I can't see a huge company (read: microsoft) able to compete quality or quantity-wise with the current and emerging nice sites.
I don't think the super-site is going to work.
Among them is browse the web, watch movies, write papers, et al. But they most of all don't want to spend their first week downloading software, particularly if they are on a dial up.
So if Windows XP was just an OS nothing else, you would need to download/buy a browser, file decompresser, media player, text editor, calculator, personal firewall, back-up utility, the list goes on. Poor old grandma would be spending several weeks downloading programs, assuming they including a basic ftp program, which the first week would be grandma learning how to use the put command.
In the end though the end-user is going to expect the computer to come pre-installed with these things, since the margins are so low on the system builders end, that only really leaves the OS manufacturer to add these in, so it's only natural that it's including with Windows. Besides that fact, I do remember a version of Media player came with Windows 95, it was real basic, but it has been in there since then.
I don't know about anyone else, but even for myself, it's still rather annoying setting up a new computer from a CD install, installing all the apps that I have on the other computer, even if I have the install executables available, it still takes time.
I don't think that MS will be able to buy its way out of their legal troubles with the EU like they did in the U.S. but you never know.
The problem with a 600 pound gorilla is that if it does not get what it wants it will beat the crap out of you until you are dead and take it anyway.
As far as their search engine is concerned, making it default will increase traffic to their site as so many windows users just go with what is already there for them. Of course we can trust MS to not filter content so bad words like Linux, Netscape, Opera, anti-trust and Mac will be available through their search engine.
There is another article in the same issue of The Economist (you need a subsctiprion to access) in which the magazine says
Begin Quote
[............]
Isn't this simply a matter of Microsoft competing vigorously? The strange thing is that its products invariably succeed in PC-based markets where the dominance of Windows provides an advantage: office productivity, web-browsing, media playback and servers. Yet in other markets that have nothing to do with PCs, such as mobile phones, set-top boxes and games consoles, the company is far less successful. Odd, that.
This newspaper has long argued, and still believes, that a break-up of Microsoft is the only remedy that would have any impact on its conduct, by removing its key weapon, Windows. At the moment that seems out of the question. How else might Microsoft be stopped from illegally exploiting its monopoly? By the long-awaited rise of open-source software such as Linux, maybe, though that seems unlikely. Perhaps the company will eventually conclude that the costs, in bad publicity and constant legal battles, of maintaining its monopoly exceed the benefits, and choose to divest or open up Windows itself. But that also seems implausible when there are large monopoly rents to be had. Some day a break-up of this too-mighty firm will again have to be considered.
[end of article]
End Quote
1.they should be forced to reveal on a public website with no cost or licence restrictions their "propriatory" file formats. (exactly which formats would have to be decided by a sutable panel made up of legal people and technical people but should include all the office file formats like word, excel, powerpoint, access). Also, all their "secret" APIs (for example hooks into the shell) and all their "secret" network protocols (for example, the various windows-only authentication for MS IIS and MS proxy server
2.they should be forced to make all their contracts with OEMs public and be banned from having secret contracts with OEMs.
3.they should be forced to sell OEM windows at one price and one price only to ALL OEMs.
4.they should be prohibited from restricting OEMs who ship (or want to ship, talk about shipping etc) systems with operating systems other than windows, systems with no operating system installed at all or systems containing windows in conjunction with one or more other opreating systems.
5.same as for 4. but for application software (i.e. OEM pre-installs mozilla or netscape or whatever else)
Basicly, force them open on the OEM desktop plus force them to give up the secrets that will allow their competitors (including Open Source) to talk to, interact with and share data with those products (windows, office, IE, IIS, MS servers, media player, MSN messenger and etc) that microsoft currently enjoys a monopoly on or that microsoft is currently using is monopoly power to push.