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New Documents Shed Light on Microsoft's Tactics
Tigen writes "As the NY Times reports, even as MS prepares to face penalties from the European Union, testimony during the second week of trial in the consumer class-action lawsuit in Minnesota has revealed some embarrassing internal documents from Microsoft which were not disclosed in the 1997 federal antitrust lawsuit. Items include a 1990 letter from Bill Gates to Andy Grove, and Microsoft's illegal tactics against the Go Corporation, a Silicon Valley startup."
If this is not anti-competitive, then what is?
Microsoft violated a signed secrecy agreement with Go and showed that Microsoft possessed technical documents from Go that it should not have had access to.
Industrial Espionage.
Microsoft violated nondisclosure agreements with Go, and then used that information to build PenWindows, a competitor to Go's PenPoint operating system.
GO has loyalty rights for PenWindows. GO should sue PenWindows licensee's individually. This is what Microsoft is trying to do to Linux users through SCO. GO has more legal grounds to stand on that SCO.
Shortly after the letter was written, Intel reduced its planned investment in Go from $10 million to $2 million
Intel was held to ransom, and they paid it.
The advice read in part that the focus should be shifted from "killing the competitor" to "providing a better solution to the customer's problems."
So they did believe in Killing Competition. A tiger never changes its stripes.
I think some of these allegations could ammount to criminal offences. I do hope Mr. Gates does a time in a cell with No Windows
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No, with more than $50 billion in the bank you shouldn't be to afraid. However you should be afraid if the reason for having this kind of money in the bank, that is, not giving information to your competitors about how servers and the desktops interact and bundling your own products with your operating system in order to force competitors out of the market, is attacked, as it is in the European Case.
It's very interesting that as a consequence of Microsoft's domination of the market, people give you very weird looks when you tell them you don't use windows. Then they calm down, an idea hits them, and they ask, "Oh, so you use Mac, then?" The weird look, however, wrests itself upward from its grave where the pallbearers were finally resting with (they thought) the satisfaction of a job well done, and climbs back on to the poor user's face when you're forced to disillusion them.
Using something other than windows is almost a stigma in some circles (circles the average slashdotter has little contact with, and avoids as much as possible), and it's the fact that most people only know and (ha!) understand how to use one OS that leads to this sorry state of affairs. A consuming fear of new ideas leads to stagnation, not innovation, and this fear is exactly what the Microsoft monopoly has led us into.
Companies are always free to develop their own embedded OS; some do. Back then the hardware wasn't available. So quit the microsoft bashing.
You seem to have forgoten what Wintel is...
OS writers are very much in a co-dependant relationship with the chip makers... the direction that the OS writers take their software and the direction the chip makers take their chips have to be in sync because one will not work without the other.
Thus, research into chip design was up until recently funneled towards keeping up with the Moore's Law pace of faster and faster clock speeds. Research into creating a chip that could run on low power just wasn't done because there wasn't much of a market for it.
In order to justify writing an OS for a handheld, you need to know what chip you're going to be running on. In order to build a chip geared for handheld use, you need to be sure somebody's actually going to make handhelds.... it's a classic catch 22, and Microsoft appears to have blocked the Go-Motorola partnership that would have made those advances a decade or so before they actually happened.
A decision was made, but a lot of people believe that decision was just so much tepid crap. Courts have been overturned in the past; perhaps if enough new evidence comes to light, the case can be reopened.
Yes, it does serve a purpose. It serves to dig up more facts and evidence should someone in the judiciary ever get wise and reevaluate that case.
Even if the trial never reopens, the Court of Public Opinion is always open. The more people learn what kinds of jiggery-pokery Microsoft has been up to, the more likely Microsoft will gets its just desserts sooner or later, and the less likely anyone else will ever pull such stunts again.
Honestly. I'm trying to figure out your attitude. "Microsoft did it, they got away with it, and that's good enough for me!" Are you always this doggedly complacent?
Need something burned down in a big hurry? Then come on down to the Flamebait Market, for all your pyromaniac needs!
You cannot truly appreciate Dilbert until you read it in the original Klingon.
The case in the EU isn't really about the money.
If the fine were the only issue microsoft would have paid it and said "sorry we wont do it again" before going off and doing it again.
The main issue in the EU case and the reason Microsoft is going to appeal it is control.
Making Microsoft remove media player (and who knows maybe others will happen later).
Making them provide *complete* specs such that other software companies can make totally compatible products.
Those are the real issues. Efforts to control microsofts future not make them pay for wrong-doings in the past.
The best thing that could come out of the EU case is the interoperability thing. Imagine if you could choose your html renderer and it slots itself into place so perfectly that anywher IE was used before your choice of renederer gets used now.
How about an NTFS implementation for Linux with complete read/write compatibility.
How about open office reading/writing all of Office's document formats perfectly.
That is what microsoft is scared of.
"I've contended for years that computing in general has been held back by Microsoft, not pushed forward, and this is an example of just how that has been the case."
Same here. Only now I find people don't argue with me so much. While Intel has done a credible job of advancing the hardware, they probably would have done more had they not relied on the nod-nod-wink-wink relationship with Microsoft.
The true agent of change is the hardware, and now software technology moving off-shore. Sadly, the cost of overcoming the Microsoft bottleneck will be America's loss of dominance in computing. Emerging economies have no desire to pay top dollar for a mediocre operating system, and with fabrication of hardware all going on elsewhere the PC is becoming close to a disposable device which means the OS needs to be that way too.
History will lay a large part of the blame at Bill Gate's feet. Having squandered our technology lead for his own personal gains and ego is a distinction he well deserves.
IF it is true then it just goes once again to show how fucking rotten the legal system is. Tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth eh? So will these be grounds for a new case? Wasn't Martha Stewart found guilty of lying to an officer instead of insider dealing? Can they get MS on withholding evidence? Perhaps even going after people who can be jailed? I personally don't believe for a second that this could be accidental (IF of course it is real)
Some posts seem to mention that attempting to create or abuse a monopoly is a felony. Doesn't this mean that MS is a criminal? So how exactly is it still allowed to do business as usual? Companies seem to want all the perks of being treated a real people but none of the bad stuff like oh say being punished for committing crimes.
Oh well at least we can snigger at all the microsoft apologist trying to wriggle out of this one. This must be one of their worst weeks. Embarrising papers, being fined and if you look at groklaw yet more hypocrasy by claiming that the EU has no right to tell it how to behave while MS itself is asking the EU to tell Lindows how to behave.
I almost pity the MS fans. Almost.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Typical MS FUD.
Please explain how YET ANOTHER example of MS using dubious business practices to stiffle competition is not hurting progress.
You alledge that it is not to blame MS for not being able to use AAA batteries 10 years ago, and you are right.
That is however not the issue.
The -issue- is how MS is illegaly extending its monopoly into other markets, and how this IS NOT promoting innovation, if only simply because if your new innovation gets eyeballed by MS, you basically lost.
remember drdos?
remember netscape?
remember stack?
remember Citrix?
remember real? Oh well Ill ask that one in two years.
So why start in the first place? THATS what software devolpers are thinking, and I alledge that this is the reason for the lack of innovation in the past 15 years.
I alledge this is another reason for the dotcom bubble burst. I alledge this is the reason for the general dubious image ICT now has world wide.
And I -know- it has cost many Office Automation specialists lots of lost happiness.
"/Dread"
Wow, you are a grade A prick. I tell you what, why not call up my parents and tell them they are "riffraff" and don't belong on the Internet.
In the end you'd be huriting yourself, and I'll tell you why:
Without the riffraff you hate:
You wouldn't be able to afford broadband Internet access, becase common DSL/Cable technology wouldn't be cost justifiable. Your only option would be costly ISDN or a fractional T1
All computer hardware would still be expensive, niche-ish, mostly proprietary and stagnant because of a lack of high-demand, high-profit incentives. Think IBM's MCA architecture as the baseline for what to expect from every manufacturer.
Thousands, if not millions of excellent paying, very rewarding positions in software development, hardware development, IT, and computer related industries would be no more. Entry level positions would be no more.
You and everyone else would still have to pay a graphic designer $100/hr to design a simple brouchure, business card, letterheard, or form. And don't forget expensive multi-color printing costs for virtually anything not able to be photographed.
Online multi-player gaming, high-quality games, and amazing simulations would be gone, thanks again to low demand and crazy high cost-per-unit ratios.
That's just a taste. To all the whiny "joe6pack" hating asshole nerds out there -- try to remember who subsidizes your low-cost, commodity hardware, low-latency high-speed connections, and increased social status. If Sun, or IBM, or other early players had their way the "average" PC would still cost $3500, require expensive manuals and training to operate, be based on closed proprietary hardware requiring expensive licensing to develop software or add-ons for and be out of the reach of the "joe6packs" out there.
At times I wonder if people have become so desensitized to people in positions of power lying to them that they no longer care. People have to accept wrong behaviour from politicians, businessmen, the media and everybody else. It does not matter if George Bush lies, or Bill Gates bullies his way through or Wall Street analysts pump up a stock - this type of behaviour does not shock or surprise - it is expected of them.
And how do you sell your soul to a book? That just has some mightily amusing implications depending on one's literary choices...