States Seek More Oversight of Microsoft

taoman1 writes "A group of states led by California said in a court filing Thursday that ending oversight of Microsoft's business practices in November would not allow enough time to consider the antitrust implications of Windows Vista. The states want oversight extended at least through early next year. 'The justice department said in its report that while Microsoft's operating system market share hasn't dropped because of the consent decree, "it would misapprehend the purpose of the Final Judgments to rely on these facts to argue that the Final Judgments have been ineffective. Microsoft was never found to have acquired or increased its monopoly market share unlawfully." In its report, Microsoft directly countered California's claims and said, the "Final Judgments were never designed to reduce Microsoft's share in any putative market."'"

Comments

Re:What?

[stinerman]

If Microsoft is a monopoly by virtue of its market share, why isn't Intel?

Because, AFAIK, Intel hasn't tried to use it's monopoly in processors (and I doubt that they have one) to get a monopoly in another area, say chipsets.

Under current law, you can have a monopoly so long as you don't use that monopoly to gain a monopoly to another market. Microsoft used their desktop OS monopoly to get a browser monopoly and then a media player monopoly.

Re:Oops

[Guppy06]

In most states (including California), the attorney general is elected separately.

Maybe Microsoft's problem is that, like you, they have no idea how their own government works, to the point of bribing the wrong people?

Really, people, you can't change your government for the better if you don't know how things work as they are.