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Japanese Government Raids Microsoft Offices
Nakito writes "According to an article at the financial news site Bloomberg, Microsoft's Tokyo office was raided by Japan's Fair Trade Commission, which is investigating whether the world's largest software maker violated the country's anti-monopoly law." Other readers note a AP/Yahoo story claiming: "A commission official, speaking on customary condition of anonymity, said Microsoft Japan is suspected of attaching improper restrictive conditions when signing software deals with Japanese personal computer manufacturers, such as requiring that Japanese companies allow infringement of their patents."
and it seems to me that they are protecting Japanese companies from alleged abuse on my Microsoft's part in contracts.
nothing sissy about that.
It is absolutely ridiculous that our rights (to free trade in this instance) in the United States are treated so lightly by our government.
At every opportunity it seems the president is reinforcing "his commitment to spreading freedom throughout the world" yet it takes a foreign power to ultimately prove how hollow that sentiment is.
When compared against Europe and Japan, the United States commitment to protecting its citizenry from overbearing coorperate powers is shown lacking time and again. I for one an tired of the hypocrisy.
Its shameful that I have to look to another country with hope that something will be done to curb the monopolistic amoral appetite of these coorperations.
For now I can only say "go Japan!". I'm embarrased by the entire predicament.
playing by more than one set of rules!
As this action by Japan illustrates, apparently not. Microsoft just ran with their typical US arrogance and got caught breaking the rules.
--- I do not moderate.
Come on, sack up and go after someone who has persistently leveraged monopolistic control to promote inferior technology (Intel, Matsushita, JVC, Sony), rather than someone that your government can't currently do without.
The article doesn't really say, but I'm thinking it's just that Microsoft stepped on the wrong toes. It's not like Japan is banning Microsoft from doing business in Japan, but more like a little warning. This is less anoying than a flybite to the big MS.
It might not have happened if MS were Japanese company?
Microsoft Japan is suspected of attaching improper restrictive conditions when signing software deals with Japanese personal computer manufacturers, such as requiring that Japanese companies allow infringement of their patents."
A deal "allowing infringement of one's patent" is more commonly referred to as a "patent license". I don't see anything improper about that
The problem is the monopoly itself, not the specific conditions that Microsoft can impose using that monopoly. Forcing manufacturers to license their patents is no more or less injurious than forcing consumers to pay $200 for Windows XP Home.
Japan is not in the United States.
You said:
and that was what I was challenging. Just because MS is (potentially) found to be a monopoly in Japan does not mean that they will be found to be a monopoly in some other country or that they will change their behavior when penetrating new markets based on any such ruling.
I've made up my mind and now I've got to lie in it.
When will the governments of the world learn that Microsoft WILL do absolutely anything it can to achieve and maintain market dominance?
when the governments of the world learn that this is how capitalism works.
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Except that the BSA is a private organization with no regulatory muscle or official backing. They don't have any authority to raid the Japanese government. (Or anyone else for that matter.)
irb(main):001:0>
when the governments of the world learn that this is how capitalism works.
I disagree.
There are plenty of companies in the IT world that play fair, work together to form open protocols for the greater good, and don't stoop to what amounts to sabotage (think of how Microsoft has bastardized CSS to protect IE's market dominance) to increase their straglehold on the market.
I'm all for capitalization, but Microsoft doesn't play by any of the rules, written or otherwise, unless they are forced to or it meets their objectives.
In this case, they aren't recognizing patents held by foreign companies.
It's sort of like in WWII, where we seized Bayer's patents. Except Japan *always does this*.
Sony has leveraged its positions in both media and consumer electronics to push an admittedly superior to DVD-Audio format (SACD). Phillips beat RAMBUS to the "standardize my patents, suckers" game with CD. JVC with VHS, etc...
Matsushita and Sony were both found to have scale monopolies (price-fixing) in Europe. Japanese business is famous not only for its oligopolistic practices (keiretsu), but also its strong influence over the decisions of the modern Japanese government.
Besides, the root comment is an obvious troll. Admit that governments shelter their domestic businesses and move along.
Are you kidding me? They're getting away with it because it's a foriegn company. Japanese corporations get away with things we'd never dream of in this country. They have no trouble with overreaching corporations as long as they're there own. Japanese trade policy has always seen Japanese Companies and government working hand in hand to pry open foreign markets by every means nessecary, and the nature of the complaints has Japanese coporate complaint all over them.
Why?
The large businesses/corporations of Japan have considerable influence in their government, moving beyond petty lobbying towards very strong and well-set puppet strings.
Fortunately, American companies don't influence our government.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
1) Don't kid yourself, Bill never spent any time starving in a basement doing development. Grandpa Gates and all his grandkids, Bill included, have always had plenty to go around. Bills education was handed to him on a silver platter, and his success (which he deserves, he is a shrewd business man with an eye for opportunity) owes it's existence to that fact.
And if you review a little Micro-Soft history (hyphen intentional) you'll see that control has always been an underlying factor in their decisions and actions. Bill certainly never said it's about being open, even when the entire software industry was open.
2) Red Hat, SUSE, and Intel to name a few. Intel? Yes, Intel supports many open standards and by and large I'd say they "play by the rules". Are the agressive at business? Absolutely. But does that mean they sabotage open standards (like Microsoft repeatedly does to CSS) to ensure their success? No, they don't.
Make no mistake, the current IT environment (except for open source) is just how Microsoft wants it. They continually do things to keep consumers stupid (like hiding file extensions by default, still! All that does is ensure that everyone and their dog clicks on hot_sex.jpg.exe and gets the latest virus, but it keeps consumers stupid, just the way Microsoft likes it). They continually do things to break standards, knowing that 90% of websites will be designed to Microsofts munged versions of the standard and look great in IE, but somehow not render right in other browsers.
There's plenty more, but it's getting late and you don't want to hear it anyway...
I know, let's pretend we're all the same, and just get all uptight and pissy whenever differences between people are pointed out! I'd rather make that vein in my forehead throb than have a good laugh any day, just so long as I still stand on moral high ground.
How the hell did this get modded up? It's just the same Linux-zealot credo we've been hearing over and over again. There's nothing interesting about it!
There are fundamental and legetimate reasons why MS has gotten to where they are and why they still remain; not least of which is Linux's failure to make an O/S as user-friendly as XP and to market their products effectively.
Make no mistake, if Microsoft were to disappear tomorrow it would throw the entire world into chaos. These things need to happen gradually through normal market forces.
Corporations: your universal scapegoat for all society's ills.
So what? That is part of the job of a smart government. If you look at the other nations in the asian sphere japan could be doing a hell of a lot worse.
Isn't it "dou" itashimashite?
Founder of Mirror Moon - Tsukihime Game Trans
1. They're both pretty despicable, once you get to his magnitude. If not those two, then why else does he do it?
The problem is that he has strayed too far into the realm of pragmatism. Most of the world is pragmatic, so he gets sympathy from them. It is our job to show him what happens when you forsake all ideals, for a change.
2. (With apologies to any "strict" Keynesians out there) Milton Friedman: 'I have called it a "fundamentally subversive doctrine" in a free society, and have said that in such a society, "there is one and only one social responsibility of business-to use it (sic) resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game, which is to say, engages in open and free competition without deception or fraud."' (boldface and emphasis mine)
Sounds good to me. By this, also sounds like Microsoft needs to get what should come to it.
However my point is that as a company you have to pay attention to more and more rules. If you don't then you end up in a situation like the present one Microsoft finds themselves in.
While one legal ruling in one country may hold absolutely no weight in another, any company that assumes it won't entice other countries to look for similar laws is not only doing themselves a disservice but acting out of arrogance. While the rules ARE different from country to country, as a global organization, you have to be aware of all of them and make sure your corporation is covering all of its bases in each distinct zone but at the same time balance this against sets of created expectations.
Assuming one can just have very specific terms and rules for one country is dangerous... for example if in Croatia Microsoft relaxes desktop icon restriction and certain license requirements to fit in with local law, how do they then deny the same changes and benefits to Serbia?
--- I do not moderate.
Care to illustrate it a bit? Are you speaking from first hand experience, or hear-say?
Unless you have a first hand experience, I doubt your assertion that the Japanese judicative does not upheld the right of foreign companies (which they have, thanks WIPO and TRIPS).
Next, it seems a bit unlikely to me that someone from the US tries to enforce a patent in Japan by going through a Japanese law-suit instead of a US ligitation. US courts are more than willing to accept a case, when the there is any involvement with a US citizen, US company, or US subsidary.
Not to mention that one had the favour of a American jury.
The enforcement would also be no problem, unless it is a purely local company, which has no business, directly or indirectly, with the US. But I guess, such a company would be hard to find.
"Between strong and weak, between rich and poor [...], it is freedom which oppresses and the law which sets free"
I don't think it is the same "Micro$oft Sux!" banter we hear so much from us Linux zealots. At least it was not intended in that spirit.
I admire what Microsoft has accomplished technologically. XP really is a good operating system, especially considering how young 32 bit GUI operating systems are in the scheme of things.
My point is not what Microsoft has accomplished, but how they've gone about it.
Take for instance their efforts to keep IE on top of the mountain:
1) With CSS they released their own buggy variant of the code, with carefully chosen deviations from the open standard, knowing full well that 90% of websites would be developed to their munged standard instead of the actual open CSS specification. The result they were after? When someone looks at a site in another browser, it mysteriously doesn't render right. "This browser sucks!", they say, as they go back to IE.
Similar tactics were used with HTML, JavaScript, JAVA, XML, and a host of others. Microsoft knows exactly what they are doing in this arena, and it is dirty pool!
2) Using their monopoly status to strongarm computer manufacturers to put IE and only IE on the desktop. Imagine if Microsoft no longer allowed Dell to ship Microsoft OS's on their computers. So, of course, Dell MUST comply, or wither and die on the vine. It took the feds stepping in to sort of stop this particular instance, but they same type of tactics are used against the computer manufacturers continually to meet Microsofts objectives.
3) Claiming IE must be part of the OS and can't be removed. This is a load of crap tantamount to perjury. I have standalone versions of IE 6, 5.5, and 5 that all run independantly on my XP just fine.
Over and over again Microsoft has shown they'll play dirty pool doing whatever they can get away with, very well orchestrated and thought out (as in the case of CSS), unless they are forced by more than an act of congress.
Everyone loses except Microsoft. Yes, Microsoft deserves our appreciation for creating the digital world we have today, but a world of open standards is far preferred from here on out. And Microsoft won't take that future lying down. They'll just plain take the future by lying (and cheating, and stealing, and strongarming, and...).
Make no mistake, if Microsoft were to disappear tomorrow it would throw the entire world into chaos. These things need to happen gradually through normal market forces.
I would say that to be one of the reasons not to permit monopolies. Normal market forces had nothing to do with Microsoft's rise to absolute power.
Japan has some of the must unfair practices when it comes to dealing with the American market,
I'd suggest you elaborate. A statement this vague and this broad sounds like Flamebait.
by Mike Buddha -- Someday the mountain might get him, but the law never will.
This is good because we'll get to see what's really going on behind those closed doors of Microsoft. An American company gets inspected by a foreign country.
"Microsoft would rather squash or buy out competitors instead of compete on a level playing field."
Obviously nobody likes a company that "squashes" other companies, but buy outs involve at least two parties. I'm less inclined to be upset about those.
I think that's because the headline is one /.'ers.
that warms the cockles of the majority of
"Japanese Government Raids Microsoft Offices"
I mean, what's the worse we can wish upon Redmond's finest? Death? Of course not.
Imprisonment? Professional ruin?
Embarassment?
Sure, pieing Gates brings some easy laughs
but having the government of a close economic ally decide to go through with this, let's face it, at that very moment we first saw the title, nothing we read could have topped that giddy feeling.
Besides, this is one of those Bloomber's press release articles:
"Microsoft Japan spokesman Kazushi Okabe confirmed commission officials were at the office, adding that he didn't know why they were there".
Writing like this truly is an art.
What isnt said is that the JFTC isnt some US stylee watchdog which usually reach into the fringe. It is populated by ex-ministers, baseball commisioners, and industrials giants.
This was a political issue. You dont have some intern accountant decide to take action against Microsoft. And in Japanese society such decisions always carry many subtexts.
Bill seems to have pissed off quite a few bigwigs in Japan. o
Nate M.
Mitsukaido
Ibaraki prefecture
Japan
Decent enough point. Nothing worth arguing.
Though to make myself feel better, I'm going to state a few vague facts:
1. Microsoft's anti-competitive behavior goes back to the early days of DOS.
2. Using the leverege resulting from above actions, Microsoft bought their talent. You know the NT kernel? That's the work of VMS's creator, bought from DEC. He wrote NT all the way up to 3.51. Microsoft subsequently cut him out. NT hasn't been the same since. (This statement has been pieced together from several sources, including a former DEC employee.)
OK, I feel better now.
does not mean that they will be found to be a monopoly in some other country
But that already happened in the US, its happenning in the EU, and now the Japanese have caught on. Seems a pretty safe bet it will happen elsewhere. What remains to be seen is if it will be stopped.
1) I'm an owner of a web design firm, and let me tell you, Microsoft screwing with CSS, HTML etc is a MAJOR problem that affects more than just web designers.
.doc file is, they just know it has a big blue W on it).
The only fair way to approach the problem is to compare the world with and without this tactic. We know what it is with this tactic (spend a few minutes surfing the net, or a few hours designing a site and trying to get it to look right in the different browsers).
If Microsoft played nice with the other children, CSS would be a far more powerful standard, reducing filesizes and load times for all, the energy and time wasted screwing with Microsoft could be spent on more productive things, I wouldn't be wasting my time writing this comment, and new and exciting features could be created as part of the open standard.
Instead we have to settle with what we have, a bunch of half broken, half implemented standards.
And this is just CSS, the problem is just as bad with JavaScript & worse with XML. And no, 99.9% of the sites do not work correctly in Firefox (and it's not because Firefox isn't a good browser, because it's a great browser). I still need to open IE daily for sites with broken JavaScript or pages that only partially render.
Open standards benefit everyone. Period.
2) I read your entire linked post, and can see why the decision makes sense for OEM's. It's a no-brainer for them. But it is a clear case of Microsoft abusing their monopoly status to crush the little guys. Is Microsoft threatened by Linux? You bet. Do they want Dell shipping servers with Red Hat on them? No way.
And the difference between market domination and a monopoly are that one can be abused, the other cannot.
Ford does not have the leverage to go to the gas stations and demand they only sell Ford compatible gas. But that is exactly what Microsoft does, and gets away with in the computer industry. (Ford doesn't have the same type of market dominance as Microsoft. Few do. That is the point.)
3) Bundling is just another abuse of monopoly power and it isn't good for consumers. Microsoft constantly and consistently tries to keep consumers dumb, and they succeed. 90% of the desktops out there don't show file extensions, this is bad for consumers (think virus's, in particular) and good for Microsoft (no one knows what a
I don't want to force open source on people anymore than I want Microsoft jammed down my throat. I should have the right to buy a Dell computer with nothing on it, if I so choose. That isn't (or at least hasn't been) the case.
Here's to the future! May it be open.
If you're holding up Bill Gates as the poster boy for "market forces" then you must have missed just about everything the company has done in about the past ten years. Sure their rise was phenomenal, and in fact I think it's the trap of their success that has pushed Gates to the draconian (and felonious) measures to ensure that noone strays from the One Microsoft Way. When 95% of the world's PCs run your OS, there aren't really that many new markets to establish, or profits to reap. Now he must squeeze those he's got, and keep them in his grasp. Many people aren't going to buy a new computer in the next few years. How can Microsoft keep the revenue coming in? Surely it's only in the best interests of the shareholders to assert some of that vast power and market influence for the good of the company.
Ah, You can't have it both ways. You can't claim that "market forces" or the "invisible hand" led to Microsoft's dominant position and then look the other way when Microsoft twists the arm of the OEMs to crush BeOS. Or when they blatanly lied about the inseperability of IE from Windows and then spent the next five years deliberately entangling the two so that now, in fact, IE dlls perform core GUI functions.
Is capitalism a Machiavellian endeavor? Or are there rules to this game? I think how someone addresses this is predictive of their view on the "Is Microsoft Evil" question.
Do you know any big Japanese company which has a monopoly (>90% market share) in Japan?
I don't know any:
- There are two major console company
- There are several major home electronics companies
- There are several major car companies
etc..
It seems that Japan anti-monopoly laws are working quite well.
I have a feeling this isn't really the case, especially with the attention span the American public has these days. (Sure, it'd affect all countries, but I think America would be the hardest hit, and what the American media says, goes...) I think the media would be in a frenzy for two days, talk about it for a week, and have largely forgotten about it after a month. As for everyone who currently uses Microsoft software well, they'd just continue using Microsoft software. Organizations that are dependent upon Microsoft software would definitely start looking into viable currently-maintained operating systems and software, which would certainly be a big leg up for...well, everyone else but Microsoft.
But there wouldn't be chaos. IT pros would have a few sleepless nights hunched over computers, but most people would rest easy.
I don't think that's necessary, but I do think that's the only way things are actually gonna happen. Of course we can talk about what would happen if Microsoft disappeared off the face of the earth, but let's be real it's just not gonna.
$ echo "ceci n'est pas une pipe" | sed -Ee 's/(eci n|pas )//g'
Why should businesses be able to do what they want? Why? For that matter, why not say that any /. user should have open access to the /. database?
Oh, wait, that's a really bad idea.
Law is basically a compromise between the perceived ideal and, more importantly, the pragmatic realities of life. If people could live in perfect accordance with the principles of honor, fairness, justice, mercy, &c then we wouldn't need to legislate things like this.
Unfortunately, human beings will tend to see potential advantages from a pragmatic point of view - i.e. what is the cost/benefit of a given action, what is the ROI, essentially (((probability of payoff) * (estimated payoff)) / ((probability of loss) * (estimated loss)))
basically, payoff/loss guides Microsoft - If they are more likely to make money than lose money by a given action, they will do it.
Recall the reason that we have police - people will break the law if they believe they can do so without getting caught. They will continue to break the law even if caught unless the consequences of breaking the law are sufficiently great as to serve as sufficient deterrent in the mind of the average citizen. This is why people get repeat traffic tickets - they don't believe that they will be caught often enough and fined enough for it to change their behavior.
As a citizen, I have the pragmatic concern that I do not desire that companies extort money from me. As this concern is pretty common, likeminded people have legislated against common methods of such. In the U.S., trusts and cartels have been and have been perceived to have been a significant problem in this area, and therefore we have laws to restrict this sort of behavior.
Japan, however, has a different view of how business should be organised. Japanese businesses are bound into keiretsu much more tightly that the trusts which U.S. law was formed to combat - unfortunately, there are a few downsides to this, such as difficulties in agreeing on a uniform DVD format, but as a whole it works pretty well. This binding, and the mindset behind it, should tell you something - namely, that Japanese law really doesn't have much in the way of anti-trust type laws. (The American occupational government broke up much of this after WWII, but the keiretsu recoalesced quite rapidly.) The organisation of businesses into keiretsu has historically been successful because of the ingrained code of honor that permeates the Japanese culture. If/as this changes, the keiretsu will either have to diminish or assume greater control of government, as has happened in the U.S.
Of course, one could argue along with people like Adam Smith that pragmatism is also the impetus for laissez-faire capitalism, but I think that a moderate position is most effective.
You are standing in an open server west of a blue house, with a boarded front door. There is an Exchange mailbox here.
If Japan were as outrageously biased as that, the WTO would threaten Japan with a huge penalty. I can't believe this post is being moderated as (+5, Interesting). It should be (-1, watched too many sensationalist anti-Japanese movies). Did MS leash their legion of astroturfing moderators today?
The exact opposite is the case: the companies get to choose which set of rules to operate under, for everything that can be moved around.
The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer.
--Henry Kissinger
I'm all for capitalization, but Microsoft doesn't play by any of the rules, written or otherwise, unless they are forced to or it meets their objectives.
and this is different from the gazillion other corporate whores that exist nowadays how? i'm not just going by the IT world. business is business, and unfortunately, there's a percentage of the population that believes profit > * . what's that, nike? you can get me running shoes that cost you 12 pesos to make but are selling for 200 usd? sweet!! where do i sign?
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No. But I have helped prepare the paperwork for a successful patent filing in Japan. The difference between the US and Japan is that you cannot patent bollocks. In this particular case 8 patents for the US ended up being 4 patents in EU and only 1 in Japan.
First: their patent office has not yet degenerated into an approval stamp machine so the patents have to have merit.
Second: they charge an arm and a leg for a patent filing so even large corporations avoid defencive patenting and stuff that has no commercial value is not patented at all.
I usually get flamed by the idealists which still believe in the "small inventor", but I will say it again. This is the way a patent system is supposed to work. A patent is a government guarantee to the inventor that he/she will be capable to exploit the commercial merits of his/her invention. Note the words commercial. So with all due respect I do not see any merits in trying to patent an invention of no commercial merit.
The side effect of this is that the US method of IPR development is reversed. For Japan you first find financial backers for the idea and then patent it.
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
Ah, what you are saying is ... not Microsoft, but Mafiasoft!
I am anarch of all I survey.
Zzz...
These "Did anyone else read it as:" jokes are getting increasingly unfunny, especially when they rely on insane juxtpositions.
Er, no, WinXP isn't a good OS. It's a nice GUI, yes. It's also a decent standalone desktop system, and (at least comparably) wonderful for games.
However, it's a shitty OS. It integrates on networks poorly. The underlying implimentation of their permission scheme is screwed up the wazoo. Locking a machine down for the desktop(let's say comparable to a -default- RedHat desktop install) takes a LOT of work and requires a lot of research to figure out how to do in the first place. It has a browser built into the core function of the OS, ffs! (or so they claim - and it is indeed a pain in the ass to rip it out). The list goes on, and on, and on as to why WinXP (or any other windows) is not a good operating system.
Say it's good for mom and pop to hack away email to their kids; say it's good for your porn and games; don't lie and say it's a good OS. (Even still, those things are only true if you don't use Outlook/IE, but it'll suffice for those tasks with about an hour's worth of updating and restarting).
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
I can't believe something stupid as this can be modded up as "insigutful".
What you describe (ignore all laws) is called an anarchy, not capitalism.
Capitalism is a system depending on a free market where everybody plays by the rules set by the book of laws. Just like murdering the CEO of a competing firm is not "how capitalism works", breaking anti-trust law is also not "how capitalism works". Actually the latter is a law created only to keep up a free market and to protect capitalism.
Yes. They're called small companies. It's like saying "people aren't interested in sex. There are plenty of 1 year olds who have no interest in sex whatsoever."
This really isn't a suprising move, since monopolies are very common in Japan, and only problem is that they ''influence'' the government through the Zaibatsu.
This seems like ploy againt American monopoly in Japan. Perhaps on of the big vendors over there is going to try and push an alternative OS? I've heard that the Linux movement over there is pretty strong, so maybe corporate interests in Linux are playing a hand there?
Microsoft will attempt to justify that without looking like a monopoly doing market segmentation by declaring they are providing different products to different people, at different prices.
Observe this in Thailand, where after teh announcement that MS would provide XP + Office at a much reduced price (about 30 Euros as I recall) came an announcement that thre would be a special edition of XP + Office lacking some features (as yet unspecified AFAIK) - a Thai cheap edition.
Observe it in the UK with the National Health Service New programme IT suprremo Richard Granger muttering about the level of discount we get on (say) half a million copies (I feel ill) of Office on Windows OS and the placement of a contract for a trial of the SUN Java desktop/Linux/OpenOffice by SUN being followed by the suggestion that MS will customise a version for healthcare.
There are few more stupid ideas than that from a healthcare IT point of view, si it has to be a smokescreen for segmentation.
When I first saw the news from Thailand I thought this was a clear indication of another tipping point that MS has gone over in the infelction of its fortunes, but as the rise has been long, so will be the fall.
Japanese motto: Business is war.
You whiny little children need to stop clapping your hands as American companies take it on the chin in foreign countries. If only our government protected US this well.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
> The BSA can not enter your property without concent PERIOD.
They have real warrants and real sheriffs with them (or whoever gives out the warrants in your state). On top of it, if you fight them the loser pays. This is the only loser pays system in America I believe and exists only to punish law firms that say, "The legal fees are nothing to us, bring it on." If the law firm loses by some technicality they have pay the BSA's legal fees in cold hard cash.
1) Control == Profits, or at least that is the plan in Redmond. If Microsoft ~controls~ the desktop, they can profit thereby. If not, why even put out a free browser? Not for the profit. Not for the ad revenue. Not to be nice. It is for control. And when you are in control, you can make the rules about where the money goes (into your bank account).
2) I care if they support open standards, and every other user of the internet should, too. To profit from the rise of computers and the internet, through means that will hasten its demise, is both short-sighted and unnecessary. And I never said being agressive was bad.
I think Intel would like to beat the competition, their actions would indicate there are reasonable limits they'd go to in order to squash them.
I dare anyone to point me to a business that wouldn't want to squash the competition.
Open your eyes. Apparently you are unaware of the relationship between Red Hat and the umpteen companies that ship derivative products using their source code! There is a huge difference between wanting to be as profitable as reasonably possible (no problem) and seeking to destroy the competition through any means possible (problem).
The business world is like the sports world. If the rules were taken out of basketball the game may be entertaining to those with room in their heads for all-star wrestling, but it would destroy the game for those that loved it, and would spell the end of basketball.
Likewise, if we are to avoid such a fate in computers, the internet, and indeed all businesses and industries, the collective parties involved must obey the common rules of decency. Otherwise, the market will simply be full of Enron's, Qwest's, SCO's, Verisigns, and the like.