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Microsoft To Pay IBM In Antitrust Settlement
Pankaj Arora writes "A settlement has been reached in IBM's private antitrust case against Microsoft. According to the terms of the settlement, Microsoft will pay IBM $775 million cash in addition to $75 million in credit. From the article, 'The settlement resolves all discriminatory pricing and overcharging claims stemming from the U.S. government's mid-1990s antitrust case against Microsoft, the companies said in a statement. The settlement also resolves most other IBM antitrust claims, including those related to its OS/2 operating system and SmartSuite products. IBM's claims of harm to its server hardware and server software businesses are not covered by the settlement, however.'"
Of course IBM could, as the news suggests, hit them again for more money, it's hardly going to dent Microsoft. What they need is restraint or some measures with some teeth in them which raise the bar.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
And this helps which company, again?
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
In the course of the U.S. Justice Department's antitrust suit against the software giant, the government claimed that IBM suffered from Microsoft's discriminatory pricing and overcharging practices, according to a Microsoft statement released Friday.
And what software competitor didn't suffer from Microsoft's discriminatory pricing and overcharging practices?
Speaking of the U.S. Justice Department's antitrust suit against Microsoft, what I want to know is: Has the Microsoft approved penalties for the antitrust trial they lost fulfilled the requirements of antitrust law?
The law requires that a remedy:
Stops The Unlawful Conduct
Prevents Recurrence Of Unlawful Conduct
Restores Competitive Conditions To The Market
Has this happened? What's your opinion?
The NSA: The only part of the US government that actually listens.
With the sale of their PC division to Lenovo, IBM's been in a much less delicate position with Microsoft, not having nearly the same volume of MS software in the low-margin space where sweet deals are really necessary and the difference of a few bucks on a copy of XP means a lot in terms of the ability to turn a profit.
I get the vibe that MS knew that IBM had brought itself into a far stronger position WRT MS, and decided not to put up a fight.
500GB of disk, 5TB of transfer, $5.95/mo
that a company can pay another company money to drop its charges and not calling it a bribe.
How Microsoft's payout to another big company relates to my rights? I mean - this is not an admission of wrongdoing, it is just a money transfer.
I would like to die like my grandfather did - sleeping. And not screaming in terror, like his passengers.
"IBM is pleased that we have amicably resolved these longstanding issues,"
Money is oh so amicable.
"We are all geniuses when we dream"
- E.M. Cioran
Now all the IBM workers that have been working at deflated rates due to this problem will get huge bonuses and raises.
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
The payout is one of the largest that Microsoft has made since U.S. District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson ruled in 2000 that Microsoft engaged in anticompetitive practices. Jackson's ruling cited IBM as a company that Microsoft had forced to "desist from certain technological innovations and business initiatives."
For example, Microsoft didn't charge all computer makers the same amount for its Windows operating system, allegedly using higher prices as a cudgel against PC companies that didn't comply with Microsoft's wishes
God: When you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all.
Microsoft will pay IBM $775 million cash in addition to $75 million in credit.
To MS, $775M is not that big of a deal. But having IBM get $75M worth of stuff from them is. Even if it's on credit. Remember - MS makes it's money off of mindshare. And having IBM who has rather recently and somewhat famously embraced Linux suddenly get $75M of free MS stuff is a huge win for MS.
I'll bet if the deal had been on the table to simply pay IBM $775M to accept $75M in MS products, MS would have gone for it. They'd pay that much to have $75M worth of mindshare suddenly implanted into one of the largest Linux players out there.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
The question is: What does this do to prevent Microsoft committing other anti-competitive crimes?
The answer: Nothing.
Microsoft can afford a few hundred million in order to benefit from anti-competitive actions; by the time the courts catch up with Microsoft the benefits must be immense.
I'm sure Microsoft is happy that the pros outweigh the cons. The company has continued anti-competitive practices even though it has previously been fined for similar crimes, and it always comes up smelling of roses.
Linux/Open Source/Anti Microsoft News
I'm not Microsoft fan, but I also don't want to see them bankrupted by the court system.
Why not?
If they were being vindicated by the legal system, then they shouldn't be driven to bankruptcy (or inconvenienced at all) by its costs.
But if they have a consistent pattern of wrongdoing and profit from it, are consistently convicted for it, yet continue in the misbehavior because it's profitable despite the penalties, why not raise the penalties until they either stop the illegal behavior (because it beomes UNprofitable) or go bankrupt (and thus stop it by ceasing to exist)?
Judgements are supposed to do two things:
- Repair the damage to the injured party by giving him financial compensation.
- Penalize the injuring party, to deter future wrongdoing.
You'll find that distinction in the judgements themselves, which are divided into "compensatory" and sometimes "puntative" damages.
Punishments are SUPPOSED to give enough pain or inconvenience to deter future misbehavior, make illegal acts unprofitable, and make repeat offenders unable to continue. They do this by escalating when repeated convictions show the pattern continues, until they become completely debilitating.
As for the stockholders suffering losses due to the officers' choice to break laws as corporate policy: The stockholders are the ones who pick the board and vote on major issues, and the board is who picks the officers and votes on day-to-day issues. So if the stockholders pick crooks (or crook-pickers) and then keep voting to retain them, it's APPROPRIATE for them to be hit in the wallet. It's an incentive on THEM to pick some non-crooks to clean house - or dump the stock on someone who will (or is willing to take the heat) before the crooks make it worthless.
As for the economy: It got along fine without Microsoft, and can do the same again if necessary. There have been plenty of other companies (and universities, and volunteer organizations) that made perfectly usable software in the past, and in the absense of the 268 Billion Dollar Gorilla I'm sure there would be again.
Many states now have "three strikes" laws to lock up violent (or "serious") repeat offenders and throw away the key. Perhaps we need something similar for corportations.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Microsoft agrees it murdered OS/2, and did lots of other nasty things. They also agreed to give IBM $850 million, but managed to talk IBM into taking a tiny chunk of it in Microsoft software.
This hurts Microsoft, no doubt about it; and some chunk of IBM's workforce which hasn't yet installed the latest MS Office (or Halo?) gets to do it for free...
"Science is a way of trying not to fool yourself." -Richard Feynman
would suddenly automagically stop working if microsoft goes under? ..
You think that no company would fill in the gaps, offering replacement products?
I find that very, very hard to believe