Storm Brewing over Microsoft on the Horizon?

SexyFingers writes "Robert X. Cringely, of I, Cringely discusses one of the last anti-trust lawsuit beleaguering Microsoft. It seems like Microsoft is looking bad on these bouts... words like, lie, dissemble, ignores were applied to Microsoft."

Comments

Why government DOESN'T keep emails....

[i_want_you_to_throw_]

I contract for a branch of the military and they have a policy NOT to keep emails after a certain period of time.

Why? The Freedom of Information Act. People are always filing them (damn you! Damn your FOIA rights!) and they use that time limit as more of a defense for themselves because in the words of legal, sometimes you don't want this stuff coming up.

Given who they are, you'll understand.

Re:Isn't this illegal?

[phillymjs]

In case you've forgotten he, or at least his wife, owns one.

Wrong.

~Philly

Ummm, they did.

[khasim]

Recall the video tape of how bad Windows was after most of the IE functionality had been disabled? It was submitted as an actual video tape of an actual experiment.

But somethings didn't seem right on the tape. Icons were changing between screenshots. But that's okay, because Microsoft just cut out some of the boring bits, but the tape is really a tape of an actual experiment.

But then it turns out that the machines are completely wrong. Well, Microsoft said it was only a dramatization of an actual experiment.

So the judge said Microsoft could do the experiment over, but that the DoJ could watch it.

Microsoft had problems re-doing the experiment because the Microsoft engineers could not get a reliable Internet connection from the hotel room.

So, the judge finds Microsoft guilty and a monopoly, appeals, etc, new administration, case dropped.

Re:Nothing will change.

[jrp2]

I never understood why cross subsidization was a problem.

Cross-subsidization is one of the core items of anti-trust regulations, as it is used to maintain monopolies and screw the consumer.

Let's go back in history to the 1950s. Standard Oil (split up into Amooco, Exxon, and many others long ago) owned the gas station market in the US. If you were foolish enough to open a gas station near a Standard Oil station they would reduce their prices to below cost until you went out of business, then raise them again and rip the customers off. They could afford to do that, and ended up with little competition.

Go back another 40-50 years or so. Before refrigerators there were ice boxes. You got ice delivered to keep your beer (and other food) cold. There were ice trusts that owned the ice delivery market. If you tried to compete, same thing, they would price you out (or send Bubba and Louie to take care of you physically, things were rougher then). As soon as you were gone, prices went back up. Again, competition eliminated, so carte blance to screw the customer as they have no viable alternative, the competition has been squashed.

This is all the same now with Microsoft. You try to compete, they squeeze you out of the market in one way or another. The big pie is at risk, so they take a loss in that little area until you are dead and they dominate. They just use different tactics. Next thing you know, you are locked into a $300 OS.

Take Wordperfect. Once they squashed them (arguably with a better product in this case) they dumped the documented RTF format, and used the ever changing, proprietary, doc format. They could get away with a proprietary format as they ruled the roost. Problem is, competition is essentially locked out due to format issues.

Anyway, cross-subsidization is evil. The big guys use this to crush competition wherever it rears up. End result, few can compete, the monopolist remains the owner and screws their customers. This is why monopolies are split up or regulated. To remove this ability to screw the consumer by crushing competition. It is at the core of any capitalist system, to keep things in check.

Re:Isn't this illegal?

[Daniel Dvorkin]

[sigh] The DoJ under Clinton aggressively pursued the Microsoft anti-trust case and was close to asking the courts for a breakup -- which they would almost certainly have received -- when Clinton left office. The DoJ under Bush walked away from a clear win and let Microsoft dictate the terms of a settlement that accomplished nothing. You can argue all day about corruption and corporate control of government, but in this particular case there was a clear difference between administrations, and to claim otherwise is to deny reality.