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Founder of Go Computer, Inc. sues Microsoft
wantobe writes "From Yahoo! News 'Microsoft saw Go's PC operating system as a serious threat to its operating system monopoly and took swift covert action to 'kill' it just as it did the Netscape/Sun Java threat to its monopoly," according to Go's private action in federal court. '
Are Kaplan's complaints warranted, or is he just taking advantage of some recent Microsoft court losses and trying to get his cut? "
If you had RTFA, you would see that this case has nothing to do with IP. Letters surfaced in a different lawsuit which proves beyond a doubt that Bill Gates himself asked Andy Grove not to invest in Go, and that Bill viewed any investment in Go as "Anti-Microsoft", in Billy's own words. Sounds pretty anti-competitive and collusive to me.
Get Barbarians Led by Bill Gates: Microsoft from the Inside and learn some history. Written by a former MS employee it has some stuff about what happened back then around Go and Microsoft.
Kaplan is hardly a kook. He is claiming that new information has come out in the recent antitrust trials, in particular, that Gates pushed Intel into dropping plans to invest in Go.
``I guess I've made it very clear that we view an Intel investment in Go as an anti-Microsoft move, both because Go competes with our systems software and because we think it will weaken the 386 PC standard. . . I'm asking you not to make any investment in Go Corporation,''
In his book, Startup, Kaplan describes how they shared trade secrets with Microsoft, something they were not keen on doing, but Microsoft promised to set a "Chinese wall" between their app division and the OS division, so only the applications people would know and that they'd be able to produce software in support of Go. In this excerpt from Startup, Kaplan details how Microsoft's app division made us of confidential information Go had shared with them to create Pen Windows, which, even as vapourware, effectively killed Go.
They settled for about 23 million dollars. Read about it here.
Free Scotland!
People don't remember that there was a reason Microsoft won. They actually had a better product.
Where "better" is (as you note) defined as "more compatible with Microsoft's existing product". Where the competition was compatible, Microsoft changed their software to make it incompatible (this is not simply speculation, it's well documented by MS employees and in MS memos). Microsoft really DID have that kind of power to cripple a competing product back in 1987 (or the early '90s: Windows wasn't really usable until Windows 3.11 and the 386 came together).
But the key thing that you're missing is that the fact that "better" means "more compatible with DOS" means that Microsoft was starting the race at the finish line.
Pretty damning stuff.
No matter how many times the evidence gets posted, there are still people who seem ignorant of Microsoft's criminal behaviour. Of course, we also know that Microsoft has been caught paying people to write articles and post in forums, so we never know what a given poster's motivation is.
Cases like Go's lawsuit are _NOT_ frivilous attempts to get money out of Microsoft. On the contrary, Microsoft has had a series of losses in court BECAUSE MICROSOFT WAS GUILTY.
In just the last few years, Microsoft was found guilty of criminal behaviour by the DOJ, and has had to make massive payouts to Sun, Novell, IBM, Apple, and others. Those are not companies that got rich through frivilous lawsuits.
Microsoft's standard method of operation has been well documented over the years. As happened with DR-DOS, Java, and Netscape, among other examples, Microsoft:
1. Allows their own product to stagnate for years.
2. Finally notices when another company starts to succeed with a new or improved technology.
3. Copies the new or improved technology (sometimes buys it, but often steals it, hence the lawsuits).
4. Fails to succeed with their often-second-rate copy.
5. Finally resorts to sabotaging the other company, through FUD, payoffs, polluting standards, and so on.
6. Gets a slap on the wrist from the courts. Pays a fine. Profit!
Microsoft's greatest innovation is their strategy for stealing technology. Microsoft always starts out by forming a partnership, or at least entering into negotiations with the other company, before stealing that company's technology. That way, the criminal courts never get involved, and no one at Microsoft ends up going to jail. Instead, the case always goes to civil court, where the worst Microsoft is likely to face is a fine. Microsoft is a master at manipulating the law.
I said that the evidence is frequently posted. Here is where you can read some of it:
The DOJ case against Microsoft - Findings of Fact:
For example, this quote showing how Microsoft blackmailed Apple:
> Gates informed those Microsoft executives most closely involved in the negotiations with Apple that the discussions "have not been going well at all." One of the several reasons for this, Gates wrote, was that "Apple let us down on the browser by making Netscape the standard install." Gates then reported that he had already called Apple's CEO (who at the time was Gil Amelio) to ask "how we should announce the cancellation of Mac Office...."
Or these quotes from Microsoft's James Allchin:
> I don't understand how IE is going to win. The current path is simply to copy everything that Netscape does packaging and product wise. Let's [suppose] IE is as good as Navigator/Communicator. Who wins? The one with 80% market share.
> Pitting browser against browser is hard since Netscape has 80% marketshare and we have 20%.... I am convinced we have to use Windows -- this is the one thing they don't have.... We have to be competitive with features, but we need something more -- Windows integration. If you agree that Windows is a huge asset, then it follows quickly that we are not investing sufficiently in finding ways to tie IE and Windows together.
Also, read the parts about the ways Microsoft "encouraged" companies to break their contracts with Netscape, about how Microsoft threatened Intel to get them to stop working on Java, and so on.
Sun's lawsuit against Microsoft over Java:
This is a classic case of Microsoft attempting to copy/steal another company's product, then sabotaging that company's version of it.
For example, there is this memo about a meeting with Bill Gates:
> When I met with you last, you had a lot of pretty pointed questions about Java, so I want to make sure I understand your issues/concerns...
I was there, I was a witness to what happened back in the 90s when this all happened, and Microsoft really did to Go what Kaplan says they did. I worked for Slate, a pen-based apps startup in the same building in Foster City that Go was in. I used the Go OS, which was powerful, well-designed, feature-rich and ran acceptably on a 386-based touchscreen tablet - a real advance at that time. Microsoft's Pen Windows, which I also used on a personal machine, was inferior in comparison. Go was way ahead technologically. Microsoft suckered Go into telling secrets under NDA, and once they had the details, MS's marketing guys played the vaporware game on Go in the public arena. A key clue was that after Go fell, MS pen computing vanished for almost a decade. It had all been about control of the market, not innovation. Hell yes, Kaplan is justified in suing. It really happened as he says.