Microsoft's Long-Playing Business Record

khendron writes "The Globe and Mail has an article which tells it like it is. Microsoft is looking at it constant court costs and anti-trust fines as simply 'the cost of doing business,' and has no intention of changing. A telling quote 'Losing or settling case after case, Microsoft has tested the bounds of antitrust and patent infringement law, with little evidence that its power has waned or that its behaviour has been substantially changed. Rivals and many legal experts say antitrust law itself has come out the worse for the skirmishes, while Microsoft appears to have built the ongoing scrutiny, fines and remedies into a strategy showing scant sign of reform.'"

Comments

Re:Repeat?

[rduke15]

Didn't Crimly just cover this?

You mean Robert X. Cringely in "Now the Only Way Microsoft Can Die is by Suicide". Yes, and it was discussed on /. too.

Not alone

[michael_cain]

Microsoft is looking at it constant court costs and anti-trust fines as simply 'the cost of doing business,'

MS is not alone in this behavior. Large local telephone companies are regulated by the states in which they operate, and many of those states require certain levels of company responsiveness when customers call -- eg, that 95% of calls be answered by a person in less than 30 seconds. Staffing to the necessary level has historically been quite expensive, and the level of fine that the states can impose for non-compliance relatively small. When you have to decide between spending $20M on additional staffing, or pay a $10M fine, the answer is fairly obvious.

I suppose extensive outsourcing to India or the Philipines will change the equation...

Re:wow, I thought the law was supposed to protect

[timeOday]

Didn't look very hard, did you.

I highly recommend the article, it's an interesting read and is quite apropros.