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

What?

[morgan_greywolf]

Didn't increase or maintain its marketshare illegally? What the hell do you call all of the RICO violations that Microsoft has been guilty of with SCO v. IBM, asking companies for 'protection money', and the thinly-veiled threats to sue the FOSS community into oblivion?

The Justice Department has clearly been replaced by members of the mafia.

Likely modded into oblivion

[Pojut]

Because of a seemingly "pro-microsoft" stance this may show, but why are people and the government so up in arms about the monopoly that Microsoft has when absolutely NOTHING is being done about broadband ISPs, phone companies, oil companies (well we all know the answer to that one) and the RIAA/MPAA?

Re:Not a good thing

[ajs]

I'm all for making the playing field even and all, but federal/state oversight of the operating system is a bad idea. There are two valid options in the long-term. Because a monopoly OS becomes a defacto arm of the government (being able to enforce policy via changes to the way everyone, including the government, gets information and/or can communicate with the world) oversight will eventually be a must. To avoid that, Windows would have to not be a monopoly. MacOS is cutting in a bit, and given time might present a sufficient competitive force. Linux is certainly presenting viable competition on the server-side, so I don't think there's a monopoly threat there.

Microsoft has pushed the states very, very hard to prevent them from moving to other platforms. If they continue to do so, the states are left only with the need to seek oversight on what is effectively a monopoly over critical government resources.

Competition, in this case, is in Microsoft's best interests.