Slashdot Mirror
States Claim There is No Match for Microsoft
Bergkamp10 writes "State antitrust regulators have dismissed companies such as Google and Mozilla Corp, and software technologies such as AJAX and SaaS as "piddling players that pose no threat to Microsoft's monopoly in the operating system and browser markets".
According to the report ten US states, including California, New York and the District of Columbia have called for an extension of monitoring of Microsoft's business practices until November 2012.
They claim that little has changed in the OS and browser spaces since the 2002 antitrust case ruled against Microsoft. In their most recent brief, the states countered Microsoft's contention that Web-based companies — Google, Salesforce.com, Yahoo, eBay and others — and new Web-centric technologies constitute what Microsoft dubbed a "competitive alternative to Windows."
Not even close, said the states, claiming that while these companies' products provide functionality for users they still rely on Operating Systems and browsers — the two spaces where Microsoft dominates.
Experts were apparently even more damning, claiming competition in the market has not been restored since 2002 and that the collective powers of Google, Firefox and Web 2.0 are about as effective as a one legged man in a butt-kicking contest when it comes to unsettling Microsoft's monopoly of the market."
The governments of these states will no-doubt still gladly accept campaign contributions from Microsoft...
We won't know that there is competition in the marketplace until another monopoly has replaced Microsoft's monopoly. Just as we did not know there was competition for IBM until Microsoft's PC monopoly replaced IBM's mainframe monopoly.
As much as I don't think the antitrust monitoring should be removed, and as much as I hate to say it: Apple is hard competition.
Unfortunately, however, no matter how much people monitor and complain, the corperate-friendly USA will just give them a slap on the wrist and say, "Bad Microsoft! Now if you'll excuse me, I've got to get back ot using internet Explorer and Windows Messenger, and bombing those damn terrorists!"
Don't mind the extra X. Alex
Microsoft is Microsoft's own worst enemy. While I applaud the intentions of the Justice Department in attempting to impose a longer period of fine-grained monitoring on Microsoft's activities, I think they're missing most of the "big picture" here. Popular news and media outlets are routinely running stories about the slow adoption of Vista by major corporations and small businesses alike. New sales of Office are apparently lagging, too. Basically, the old story of "what we have now is good enough" is, in many cases, happening all over again.
My personal opinion is that by the time consumers are truly "forced" into another Microsoft upgrade cycle, viable and attractive product alternatives produced by Google and others will already be gaining significant ground. Even in the face of what many consider corrupt business practices on the part of Microsoft, the market is deciding the best route, albeit slowly. It just so happens that the market is finally starting to feel the evolutionary push of technology moving in leaps, rather than a slow progression.
512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
I'd pay good money to see that!
Microsoft is a convicted abusive monopolist (which is different from a plain old monopolist). Alright fine. Personally I don't agree that they are, especially now with the resurgance of Apple as a viable alternative. But really, compared with the old AT&T, Standard Oil, and especially the British East India Company, Microsoft is an amateur.
so much for the year of the linux desktop
Isn't that... bad?
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
*activates sarcasm matrix*
Hmmm. No wonder Linux has such a tough time getting onto people's desktops!
*Deactivates sarcasm matrix*Don't mind the extra X. Alex
S. 1257, the District of Columbia House Voting Rights Act of 2007, came 3 senate votes short of unconstitutionally granting DC full representation in the house. I'm glad to know anonymous cowards understand the Constitution better than cosponsors Hillary Clinton, Chris Dodd, or Barack Obama.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
MSFT market cap: 315 Billion dollars
GOOG market cap: 218 Billion Dollars
Google is not being thwarted by microsoft.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Microsoft is no match for the dread pirate Elaine Roberts!
a one-legged man with super ninja skills, antigravity boosters, and a rocket launcher!!!
Time out for a second. This is ridiculous.
Microsoft is one of the United States most profitable businesses. What other country has an absolutely HUGE company with it's main product fueling the rest of the world...hmmm Saudi Arabia perhaps, but that's another market (Petroleum)
I doubt this sort of behavior occurs in India, or China, or Pakistan for that matter.
This country is going to hell in a handbasket economic wise and these technological industries are one of the US's last hopes.
What I find ironic is our own government is trying to stifle a major breadwinner for this country, while the rest of the world thrives at our expense.
Wake up America. Compete and embrace our home grown successes or go out of business, not to mention Microsoft uprooting itself and moving to a more economic friendly country.
There's a one legged guy in the town where I live, he lost his leg in a motorcycle accident. He's a nice guy, friendly and all. I've seen him kick a piñata to pieces with a single roundhouse kick. He landed awkwardly, but it had the desired result.
The moral is: never underestimate the one-legged guy!
I would say that to compare Microsoft in the post Sherman era they put Standard Oil and AT&T to shame. Apple as competition does nothing to change Microsoft's monopoly status. Every monopoly has competition. A monopoly is not defined by relative rather than absolute competition.
They're a convicted monopolist, how the hell is 'monitoring' going to make a difference? Hurry up and actually do something already. The EU are imposing fines, the US is just 'monitoring' them....
I agree. I used to get really exercised about M$, but then I started reading about Monsanto. M$ is greedy and unethical, but their behavior doesn't usually kill or maim people. Monsanto is another story.
Sometimes less is more: Less control and fewer secrets will make more freedom and deny the future you predict:
We won't know that there is competition in the marketplace until another monopoly has replaced Microsoft's monopoly.
You might as well say that every company is just as evil as M$ because every person is just as greedy as Bill Gates and as craven as Steve Ballmer. That makes as much sense as M$'s unnatural software monopoly.
A free software market will favor many vendors of free software. A free market adopts open standards that lower the cost of commerce. It's amazing that M$ has pulled off it's goofey 1980's file format and OS game for so long. The costs of upgrading from one barely adequate OS and Office suit to it's successor has always been much larger than the upfront cost of software and forklift hardware replacement. It's been blood sweat and tears wasted moving and converting everything or losing it forever. Market rejection of Vista shows that both home and business users are getting smart. Given the choice of Vista or the highway, people have chosen to limp along with what they have and are looking for another ride. Free software is just what they are looking for because users who write software make sure software does not screw users. Another plus is a great choice of vendors because software that has no owners can be fixed by anyone. Many winners, such as IBM, will emerge but none will have the kind of advantages M$ has now: complete ownership of a platform full of secrets and booby traps. Red Hat can not run Novel out of business though dirty tricks, they can only compete fairly. The world will be a better place without that kind of waste and the billion dollars a month M$ wastes in advertising to convince people that nothing could be better.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
not software. Furthermore, the ad-supported information services Google provides only partially and indirectly threaten the markets Microsoft currently has monopoly over.
Like Iraq?
The issue is not that Microsoft generates a huge proffit. The issue is that Microsoft uses questionable methods to achieve those proffits.
Examples include, but are not limited to:
Don't mind the extra X. Alex
MS is very successful at its current market 'initiatives' (forgive me, I'm not a business major). In this I would account for its major divisions like OS, Software applications, Servers, Xbox, and Internet.
... its late and couldn't come up with a better example).
Suggestions even 5 years ago that Xbox would beat or rival Sony and Nintendo in the console market was unheard of, the point being, that Microsoft has a 'monopoly' on a large and diverse business and consumer userbase. Apple comes out with the iPod. There was already a 'healthy' competition with MP3 players but when MS saw the numbers the iPod was making Apple, I think it saw a great opportunity. Ditto, I think the iPhone, the Blackberry and other PDAs, etc.
If the government can somehow restrict it from going into new markets and letting some healthy competition grow, I don't see this as being a bad idea. The threat isn't MS entering other areas of business in itself. The problem is its huge cash reserves. The money and technology component, I see, remain exclusive to MS. IBM have a ton of cash too - but IBM has changed its core businesses instead of trying to gobble up small and major competitions in a wide array of industries. (yes, the irony IBM is making the chip for the XBox 360
How, exactly, is Linux not a valid alternative? That leaves aside Apple, which is yet another strong alternative. And of course it leaves aside the dozens of other obscure-ish UNIX-like and non-UNIX alternative OS's people can use. And Microsoft has no pricing power over these other OS's, to boot. So it really dumbfounds and amuses me at the same time when people can sit with a straight face and claim Microsoft is some evil Monopoly.
How do Microsoft's accusers expect people to get other internet browsers if there is no way to access the internet pre-installed on the system.
There seems to be a gap in their logic.
Without the so-called 'evil' included browser, users either have to pay to get a different browser or get one from someone else who already has one.
Either way, it would be inconvenient for the customer, cost them money for something that up until this point has been free, and would cripple Microsoft's operating systems, especially if Apple, Linux, and other systems were not subject to the same restriction.
MS may continue to dominate OS and desktop software, but that is not the threat to MS. The world is moving in other directions that don't rely on MS's dominant products nearly as much. Regulators usually refuse to acknowlege that their work has become irelevent. For example consider the FCC's continued regulation of LATA boundaries to measure long distance charges (who cares anymore?) Governments might continue to regulate MS even as its earnings decline and its power fades. Maybe MS will remain regulated even as it eventually goes out of business (every company goes out of business some day).
So does that mean the fines, etc. brought against Microsoft were a failure? That they should have been much steeper?
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Our slap-on-the-wrist "punishment" has done jack-shit for 5 years. I know! Let's extended for another 5 years! That ought to do it!
___
If you think big enough, you'll never have to do it.
Yes, yes. You've told is before. With your sockpuppet as well.
Hint: it's not the message. It's the messenger and the way it is delivered. That's why you post at -1.
They didn't play politics the right way soon enough...
I would say that:
Never underestimate a one legged man in a butt-kicking contest!
there are no viable alternatives.
The thing is is there are viable alternatives however MS lobbyist keep using FUD to scare states from using these, including open source, alternatives. I'm typing this in Firefox running in Tiger, no I didn't upgrade to Leopard even though I have the dvd, on a MacBook Pro. For my office suite I use NeoOffice, the Mac centric version of Open Office. With it I can open and save documents in MS Office 2007's .docx format.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Is Microsoft a monopoly because no one can compete with it, or can no one compete with Microsoft because it is a monopoly?
Jesus is coming -- look busy!
There is very little binding force keeping Microsoft's monopoly together these days. The answer to the question "why M$?" is the opposite question "why NOT M$?" Ok, like 0.1% of you say "because they are evil" but everyone else wants an OS with the PC they buy that works pretty well. Even Vista fits the bill. Today, Windows dominates because it works better for consumers than other alternatives save OS X. The problem with Apple is that people like choice, and at least with MS, you get your choice of hardware vendor. And even under these circumstances, they are gaining market share. In fact, I contend that if Apple licensed OS X like Microsoft does Windows, we'd see Windows market share drop like a rock. That wouldn't be the case if Microsoft still had any teeth at all like it once did. Dell's even trying to sell Linux now. MS's monopoly is extremely fragile, and their days as a 95% market share owner are numbered, even if they got their teeth back.
microsofts power is undisputable, it is however quite clear that the competitors are calling many of the shots
mozilla clearly got to design ie7
mac os x designed windows vista
linux security designed vista security
The problem with these so called "Experts" and "Business Analysts" is that they simply lack the foresight to see into the distant future. Based on some petty statistics, they can predict the business trend for a next couple of years but they simply can't tell what's going to happen 10 or maybe 15 years down the line. Take them 20 years back, and these same "experts" could never have been able to predict that Microsoft would become such a behemoth as it is now.
So simply shut your eyes and ears when "experts" say some thing. Ten years from now they would be saying: Well, there is nothing that can displace Linux from the desktops. OS "XYZ" (some futuristic OS not Microsoft) is not remotely capable of offering a competition to Linux's monopoly and blah blah blah.
I personally just love it when avid Apple user chime in on a Microsoft monopoly issue. Please explain this to me. If Apple continues it method of marketing (which for most all of its products is extremely closed...you must buy their OS AND hardware or their iPod AND their iTunes or their phone AND the service with it), what would we all be saying if Apple had a 95% market share today? Wouldn't it be extremely monolopolistic and be taken to court as no OS or other hardware manufacturer could compete in that market AT ALL!!! At least Microsoft doesn't block other broswers from working and has an open market for CPU and hardware AND you can load other OS on the hardware that you don't have to buy from MS.
Don't you think that Apple will continue its marketing scheme? What if we lived in an alternate reality where Apple was 95% of the market? Don't you think they would be accused of the same thing but even more so? Stop your envy of market share Apple!!! You're no better in the way you do business.
jsut athnoer menagiensls ltitle psrhae for you to dcoede. Why do we wtsae our tmie dnoig tihs?
I'm pretty sure Linux.com was the first to report on Microsoft's 'Men in Black' lobbyists killing open source in Florida earlier this year. http://www.linux.com/feature/61481/
This research is flawed. Comparing Microsoft to Firefox is like comparing the U.S army to a golden retriever. I am not even sure if Firefox is "competing" with Microsoft. The article also fails to take into account Google's abilities. I am surprised that no one mentioned the rumored "Google OS" based on Linux that sprang up last year. Google is highly capable of basing an operating system on Linux, and I wont doubt that they can even create their own. I believe these experts are failing to see the big picture. Telling me Linux and Apple are not viable alternatives to Microsoft is completely ridiculous to me, and will probably cause me to cast all of your credibility out of the Window. How could a credible "expert" on operating systems say Linux and OS X are not viable alternatives? What's a viable alternative? What's viable? As for legalities, I do not think Microsoft is doing thing illegal.. only wrong. It's not illegal to use other peoples operating systems then tell your people to copy the feature with an ad-hoc, watered down version, that's not-exact-but-looks-alike-enough to pass. The OS market is predominantly run by three key competitors, two if you exclude Linux as I'm not sure it can be actually classified as a company. But these three competiting operating systems are actually similar in more ways than most would realize. Web operating systems are not replacing desktop operating systems.
All it means is that he has to work harder at kicking ass. In the end, ass is still kicked.
I mean that both literally AND metaphorically.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
But where does Microsoft's money come from? Mostly from American companies and American people. Where does the money go to? I bet most of it stays here in America, but a lot of it goes to foreign stock holders. So, does more money go out, or come in? Even if more money comes in, or it is neutral, that is probably overwhelmed by the lack of efficiency in the exchange. Nobody makes 100% profit. And don't forget all of the American money lost due to cracking MS systems, sales lost due to reliability problems, and man-hours lost due to maintenance issues. And how much money would the competition make, if they were allowed to exist?
Write your own Choose Your Own Adventure. http://www.freegameengines.org/gamebook-engine/
Isn't this a good thing? Am I missing the point here? While I disagree with the State Antitrust Regulators in regards to the affect of the other companies, doesn't it give them fuel to further regulate Microsoft?
Let's imagine, for a second, that with the knowledge we have today we could go back 5 years and change the punishment put against Microsoft. If that were the case, my biggest suggestion would be to forbid further development of Internet Explorer, unless it was to add new features. As bad as a reputation as Internet Explorer has had over the past 5 years for security vulnerabilities, Microsoft's inability to fix those security vulnerabilities would have left Internet Explorer a pariah years ago.
For those who think such a requirement is unfair, I can only respond, then let Microsoft be held responsible for selling an *admittedly* defective piece of software. If Microsoft tries to claim that IE is part of Windows, that just means they must refund the price of Windows to all who purchased Windows with IE. And if Microsoft tries to claim a price on IE, then Microsoft can refund the price of IE; meanwhile, they can be sued by Spyglass for back-payments (with interest, late fees, etc) for their technological contributions to IE--the only bad part of this being that it'd possibly contradict an existing settlement.
And now that we know what happened with Microsoft, what would I suggest? To forbid further development of Internet Explorer, unless it was to add new features. If there's anything XP SP2 and Vista's IE limited mode have shown us is, Microsoft doesn't believe any more than anyone else that Internet Explorer is remotely bug free. And I'd predict that within five years, no security updates would leave Internet Explorer a pariah.
Eurohacker European paranoia, gun rights, and h
Ahem! Europe and Asia individually have much higher populations than the US and probably the same penetration of Microsoft products as does the US.
And whilst it could be argued that in large parts of Asia where the cost of living is lower than in the US, the prices for MS products are probably less than in the US, here in Europe we generally pay *MORE* for everything than in the US - the same in Euros or Pounds Sterling that you pay in Dollars.
So no - most of Microsoft's money comes from outside the US.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
And it's probably another example of Microsoft leveraging their monopoly (OS) to gain market share in a new area, the same way IE gained so much traction. Getting a monopoly is not bad (or rather, it may be, but its not illegal). Monopolies can naturally occur when one product is clearly superior, or its a new market just opening up, etc. Monopolies are evil when you use them to kill competition in another market.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
There are some great alternatives to Windows: Mac OS X and Linux, but people and businesses are still choosing windows. The problem isn't lack of competition, its humans' hesitation to adopt new technology.
Google makes pretty big profits, and Apple and IBM don't do so bad. Red Hat and Novel are functional, your only commercial competition problems it these industries are Mandriva and Turbo Linux. (Heh heh...) Sun also provides and operating system that currently is technically feasible. So your USA is not going to suffer because Microsoft is forced to behave civilly. Does anyone know of an Australian operating system competitor? I'd like to give it a burl.
Semi-automatic amateur armchair Australian philosopher; conjecture ready at any moment...
I don't know if there is something that I am missing here, but why is it that I can go to the store and buy the shiniest new video game with realistic physics and lighting for about 50 bucks, but if I want an office suite I have to pay $300? I am a non-programmer so maybe someone could enlighten me, but it seems that an office suite that is updated every year or so should require fewer man-hours to make than any game. My papers sure don't look any better this year than they did the last. I tried to use wordperfect, and it seemed to work worse than it did ten years ago. Isn't this the first thing the government should be looking out for? I bet Microsoft could charge $20 for Office and still make money. I mean who really cares about Internet Explorer, it's free.
Yeah, right. Because myriads of Windows users are just going to flock to their local computer store to hand over their $129 for OS X - just like they did for the copy of Windows that came on their PC or the copy of Ubuntu they downloaded freely from the Internet.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
The argument about Operating Systems isn't so much because people need Windows for Windows' sake (with the exceptions of IIS and Domains/Active Directory, I doubt many businesses rely heavily on any feature specific to Windows itself) as it is because they need it for Windows-based software (well, I suppose you could call the Windows API a "specific feature of Windows itself" but that's not how people view it). As another poster pointed out, the software that organizations and even private citizens rely upon is often limited to Windows, with the Mac/Linux equivalents, if they even exist, being feature-limited or at the very least requiring substantial re-training and re-investment.
.NET but are explicitly tested and supported in Mono, but in general, software will have native code components that most companies don't see as worth the hassle to port.
The problem with this, of course, is that reversing that kind of situation is very difficult. Without MS actively contributing to Wine/ReactOS, there isn't much they can do to make Windows-only software any less Windows-only. Without a major increase in the market share of alternative OSes, there's little incentive for third-party developers to place much priority in cross-platform development. There's always Java, and I know of a few products that are developed for
By the way, I'm not sure I agree with the idea that IE is a real monopoly. Yes, it's still the only browser that supports ActiveX and some people still use that, but alternative browsers have become reasonably common - far beyond what alternative OSes have achieved ever since Windows' rise to dominance - and while it's certainly still common enough that people will develop for IE's rendering engine, you also see plenty of sites encouraging visitors to use alternative browsers. Additionally, most sites render fine on IE, Firefox, Opera, Konqueror, etc. without any browser-specific customization; with regard to these sites, IE's market share doesn't even matter (it could rise to 100% or drop to nothing over the next month and it wouldn't affect the owners of those sites). Compare this to non-web applications, where true cross-platform is a fairly rare thing, and I'd say IE's market share should be much less of a concern than breaking the chicken-and-egg problem with Windows-specific software.
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
Popular news and media outlets are routinely running stories about the slow adoption of Vista by major corporations and small businesses alike. New sales of Office are apparently lagging, too.
Microsoft had a spectacular first quarter.
Tremendous strength in Windows, Office, and Server products. Revenues in each division up 20%. Microsoft Q1 2008 By The Numbers
Office 2007 at retail "sells like gangbusters."
Office commands 17.4 percent of all PC software dollar volume, including PC games. When people go to the store to buy software, there's a good chance they'll end up buying Microsoft Office." PC Software's Great Year [October 20]
The October OS Platform Stats from w3Schools are suggestive;
Vista at 6%. Up 4% from March 07.
Linux at 3%. Up 1% from March 03.
OSX at 4%. Up 2% from March 03.
ms has only a nonvoting portion of the stock. of course, this stock is worth several hundred million...
I heard about MS buying the non-voting Apple stock when it was announced in 1997, but after reading your post I was wondering what happened to the stock so I Googled and found this From Apple's 2003 SEC filing::
"In August 1997, the Company and Microsoft Corporation (Microsoft) entered into patent cross license and technology agreements. In addition, Microsoft purchased 150,000 shares of Apple Series A nonvoting convertible preferred stock ("preferred stock") for $150 million. These shares were convertible by Microsoft after August 5, 2000, into shares of the Company's common stock at a conversion price of $8.25 per share. During 2000, 74,250 shares of preferred stock were converted to 9 million shares of the Company's common stock. During 2001, the remaining 75,750 preferred shares were converted into 9.2 million shares of the Company's common stock."
FalconShould there be a Law?
What do you want? The governments of these states are simply obeying the EULA. I am copying this EULA below for reference (bold emphasis mine):
Even if folks from MS read that, they too would have had a good laugh at those bloating statements.
Hmmm I don't think we have produced anything useful since the Microbee http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MicroBee :)
Sounds a bit spicier than the norm for cases like these.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
unless it generates a good revenue stream I don't really plan to do much support
bingo
Ah but I wouldn't be in the business of programming, I'd be in the business of photography. If instead I wanted to be a programmer and run a software business instead of wanting to be a photographer then I would expect to support the software I sold.
FalconShould there be a Law?
I'm the original poster of this reply.
The one point nobody mentions is the millions of people in America employed in high paying jobs due to Microsoft's products and their proliferation in the industry (hell, they ARE the industry)
Now, I spend my hard earned money on Apple Macintosh computers and such, but I can't over look the fact that America beats down, controls, and damages it's own economy by regulating BIG BUSINESS that makes BILLIONS of dollars all over the world.
What is the point of working hard, growing a business, hiring talent and making other competitors INNOVATE to survive? Why would I want to do that if I knew someday the government would step in and moderate how large I become?
You bet your ass I would move by base of operations to another country and let them reap the economic rewards.
At this stage of the game, the US has bigger fish to fry vs. trying to keep Microsoft down. The government needs to fix the damn national debt, immigration, etc before trying to squelch a blue chip company like MS.
Besides, is anyone going after Boeing? Who else in the US makes passenger planes anymore? Boeing ate up all its competitors and is in bed with the US government and even gets kick backs. Nobody is after them as a monopoly in the skies (not withstanding Airbus of course, but they are European and really put the hurt on Boeing until lately)
So, what is the US going to do. Regulate the shit out of an industry we kick ass at until a foreign competitor comes along, beats Microsoft at its own game (after the US government emasculates it) and then bail it out down the road.
Improbable, but NOT an impossible scenario.
Just look at the state of affairs of the US auto industry, airlines, etc where the US used to be the leader.
Why regulate OUR OWN strengths when the rest of the world lets its companies grow and succeed unfettered?
No I am not an employee, just a patriot who is sad to see this great country being sold off to foreigners each day.
The whole ", no?" reminds me of some establishment troll. You are a geek who is overcompensating, no? You are a paid shill, no? You are just a plain troll who thinks oneself clever, no?
the price tag has always put me off of looking any further at a Mac.
Today's prices for Macs are comparable to the prices of Windows PCs. While some Mac configurations cost more than comparable PCs, some cost less. The real problem with Macs is that unless a $2500 Mac Pro is bought Macs aren't particularly configurable. Only the Pro can be opened up to replace or add another graphics cards or a second hdd easily, or any number of other things.
Problem is, most folks have never even heard of Linux as a viable alternative.
This is oh so true. But as more PCs come with Linux preinstalled people will hear of it.
FalconShould there be a Law?
I'd say Elle MacPherson is quite a useful export.......... :)
especially the British East India Company, Microsoft is an amateur.
However whereas Microsoft has no substantial competition in it strongholds of OSes and office suites, the "British" Honourable East India Company had competition. The Dutch East India Company, the first corporation to issue stocks to the public, offered the British company competition.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Why IE7 and Vista security are so fscked up then?
My Linux doesn't ask stupid questions every time I use it.
Firefox is much more usable than IE7, hell, even IE6 is more usable.
Patents Drive Free Software as Hurricanes Drive Construction Industry
But at least part of the argument is that with their monopolistic practices, Microsoft is stifling competition, and hence innovation, within the United States. Protections for large corporations like Microsoft have been on the increase in the U.S. in recent years, because there is big money involved. But if you let the big companies rest on their power, and not the quality of their product, then the new innovative products will be produced elsewhere, where they have a chance to survive, and at some point the large corporation will disappear, and all the good stuff will be somewhere else.
...it's paid for by consumers who buy Windows. The cost of development is included in the price of Windows. You have the option of uninstalling it, but you don't have the option of not paying for it.
Every monopoly has competition
Er, you don't really understand the meaning of the term monopoly, do you?
Microsoft pre-installing internet Explorer with Windows, dropping a metaphorical nuclear bomb to end the browser wars, and then integrating it into the system, making it impossible to remove.
Microsoft pre-installing Windows Messenger/Windows Live Messenger, making MSNp the dominant protocol
Indeed. Heaven forbid Microsoft respond to their competitors (or spur them on) by offering equivalent functionality (or introducing new functionality).
Steve Balmer claiming that Linux violates Microsoft's patents, scaring away any potential switchers.
This isn't "scaring away" anyone who matters. The idea that it's scaring away anyone at all in the desktop consumer market doesn't even pass the laugh test.
Microsoft offering deals to schools and third-world countries, so the little kiddies grow up only knowing how to use windows and Office.
But giving away Linux to those same schools and third-world countries, so the little kiddies grow up only knowing Linux, would be A-OK ?
Why is MS's FUD so effective? Why can MS get it so very wrong and STILL see record profits? If there were a competitive market, MS would be haemoraging money. That they aren't and are, at worst, holding steady, shows that there IS no competitive market. A competitive market has several alternative suppliers so that competition can take place (rather than lump it or like it).
And even if the market has alternatives, they may be no better than a Hobsons' Choice, so are not an effective alternative.
Rather than mod me down - care to make your own predictions?
Are you new here or what? You just went on a tirade against Microsoft, said how Linux and Apple were trending to take market share from them and sang the praises of OpenOffice.org. Then you invite people on Slashdot to mod you down. For what? You're preaching smack in the middle of a HUGE choir.
I'm surprised you're not +10 Godlike by now.
I'm a big tall mofo.
Depends on how you feel about rape. I'd have to think it would be a violation of trust, I didn't realise that Microsoft was also abusing their monopoly amongst the porn/snuff industry.
Semi-automatic amateur armchair Australian philosopher; conjecture ready at any moment...
The only reason Microsoft can currently hold this monopoly so effectively is games... There are no good games developed for other operating systems and there definitely aren't games offered exclusively for an operating system other than windows (At least no good ones). Sure, there are emulators such as WINE but these emulators can never run the game as well as Windows since it was developed exclusively for windows.
The solution is that the open source communities need to produce a viable alternative to DirectX for the game makers.
What the clucking bell do you think COPYRIGHT IS????
It's a monopoly on that expression.
Patents: A MONOPOLY on the idea.
Trademarks: A MONOPOLY on the image.
Without copyright/patent/tm you'd be right, it's impossible to have a monopoly in art. We DO HAVE them. And they allow a monopoly to be made.
If you want to interoperate with CIFS, you need to have a license for MS's patented technology. If you want to use MSOOXML you need to agree to a license. This means that communicating to MS's products means you must agree to MS's monopoly control. And computers MUST talk to one another. What's the point in writing a letter if nobody can receive it? What's the point in a game if nobody can play it? Computers MUST interoperate to be useful. And that's where MS keep their monopoly.
"Slashdot requires you to wait between each successful posting of a comment to allow everyone a fair chance at posting a comment.
It's been 54 minutes since you last successfully posted a comment"
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
We haven't mass produced anything, but I'm know we have produced several good prototypes of ingenious devices. And we modified the F-111 to have a much lower visibility to USA radar that was significant in our triumph over them during the war games in the late 1990's. (It is rumoured that CSIRO were the first to develop the psionic na- Hey, what are you doing here! I'm calling the policddwearjkejks.wlfal;adls
Semi-automatic amateur armchair Australian philosopher; conjecture ready at any moment...
Dunno about useful, intriguing maybe, but useful implies non-entertaining functions are the original purpose.
Semi-automatic amateur armchair Australian philosopher; conjecture ready at any moment...
This is one of those statements that's hard to deal with... If you say "Yeah! stick it to them!" because you hate Microsoft or some other advocacy reason, then you have to also realize that you're agreeing with them that your choice of non-Microsoft OS/software has been declared by them to be junk.
;)
If you disagree because you think your choice is viable, then you're saying they're wrong and that goes against your advocacy.
Why does everyone seem to assume that there will necessarily always be one superdominant monopoly player in the computer industry?
If Microsoft had not risen to become what they are, there would be none. There would be standards that most people follow, and at least a half-dozen different OSes that implement them sharing the lion's share of the market.
When Microsoft's power is finally broken, I expect that a similar situation will result. Apple will gain marketshare, sure, and so will Linux. But eventually, as people are forced to come to understand, at least to some degree, what an OS really is, more viable choices will appear.
I seriously doubt that when Microsoft's monopoly disappears, it will be replaced with another similar monopoly.
Dan Aris
Fun. Free. Online. RPG. BattleMaster.
Yes, there are technical alternatives.
Even, contrary to what some say, technical alternatives capable of being implemented in large institutions.
There are still no alternatives in the _common_ _perception_ of the market place. There are no alternatives on TV.
Well, the Mac is on TV, but it is most definitely _not_ an alternative. Jobs would have to let it be legally installable on whitebox hardware first. We're not just talking about letting Dell and HP make and sell Mac OS pre-installed boxes. Your local integrator has to be able to install it, without too many hurdles, and at a cost that leaves him some profit.
So, the technical alternative on TV is neither a marketplace alternative nor a market alternative. And Jobs _can't_ push the Mac OS into full confrontation in the marketplace like that until he has something to fight MSOffice with. (OpenOffice is close, but still not quite there.)
No (valid) Linux distro is on TV. It has no presence in the perceived market. So, while it is a technical alternative and a market alternative, it is not a _marketplace_ alternative.
So, one step which could be taken is for RedHat and IBM to start pumping ads into the prime-time TV stream.
Or, Microsoft could (be ordered to) get out of the stream.
(And we may need to put similar restrictions on iNTEL, if they fail to convert their Classmate project into a machine that meets the OLPC specs and offer OLPC as an alternative on it. The "iNTEL Inside" labels are they same kind of thing.)
Of course, we don't want to suggest that RedHat and IBM start trying to bribe and threaten people, even if they could afford to get in a bribing war with Microsoft.
One relief I could think of that might not be unreasonable for a court to order when a company continues to behave like Microsoft. Strip them of all their patents and bar them from obtaining more patents until their market presence drops below 50%. (Trade one monopoly for another.)
...I'm far too lazy to do anything responsible and researchly like looking up SEC filings, but I thought I remembered that Microsoft had then sold almost all its Apple stock?
Dan Aris
Fun. Free. Online. RPG. BattleMaster.
MS still have copyright on it, so they are abandoning the code. If you have Real Property and you abandon it, you lose it.
It's either open the code or support it as long as you have copyright.
Anything else would be unfair.
"Slashdot requires you to wait between each successful posting of a comment to allow everyone a fair chance at posting a comment.
It's been 29 minutes since you last successfully posted a comment"
Diabetic monkeys pinch out something better than slashcode each day...
The problem is that IBM didn't realize its position was in jeopardy until it was too late; remember that IBM wanted to get a PC into the market in quick-n-dirty style and getting Intel to supply the processor and Microsoft to supply the OS was just a corner-cutting move.
Microsoft, to their credit, knows their history; they relentlessly push into every single market, from game consoles to cell phones to every type of software simply because they are terrified that the *one* thing they overlooked is what came back to kill them. Sure most of their products stink and don't make money, but at least they've got a presence, regardless of how small or laughable.
I believe this is largely due to two major factors. First, Apple isn't a huge company. Yeah, they're worth plenty, but they don't have anything like the number of employees that, say, Dell has, and, though I wouldn't even know where to go to look it up, I rather suspect their budget is similarly smaller. That means that they can't easily afford to make the thousands of different configurations that are possible with Dell.
The second reason is one of philosophy: Apple has always been very much about not confusing the user (sometimes taken to extremes: see the one-button mouse). I can tell you from personal experience that even smart, moderately computer-savvy (for a non-geek) people trying to look at stuff on Dell's site can get very bewildered by the dizzying range of options. Apple's way gives very clear, easy-to-understand product lines, with a few different choices within those lines, and then a small amount of build-to-order customization available. It's not going to satisfy a geek who really likes to build boxes from scratch, but plainly, Apple doesn't care.
Maybe if they grow to 50 times their current size, then they'll be both willing and able to cater to all the different market segments that Dell does, but for now, it's just not what they do. It means that some people can't find a computer that really fits them at the Apple Store—but I guess Apple's willing to live with that. It's really not easy to be all things to all people, and do it well for every one of them.
Dan Aris
Fun. Free. Online. RPG. BattleMaster.
A monopoly is not a company that dominates a market. It is a company that stifles all competition and unlawfully does not allow new entrants into the market. Microsoft faces competition every day, and is clearly losing its edge, as can be seen with the failure of Vista and the success of Firefox. It is not fair to fine Microsoft for its success. If Windows and Office are truly so overpriced, it should be simple to create a product that has comparable/better features that can be sold for cheaper...right?
Of all the dumbasses on
Oh, wait, you're an astroturfer. This is one of MS's "official" defenses. Nevermind.
I think its interesting the number of stories I've read on slashdot recently that mention Salesforce.com. I had never heard of them before I started my current job. I guess my question is are they really getting this big or is their PR department working overtime?
History is best viewed in the rear vision mirror.
The engineers who loathe this culture leave it; those who revel in it stay, get promoted, and keep it in place.
In general, it is safe and legal to kill your children. -- POSIX Programmer's Guide
So... it's Microsoft's fault that all their "competitors" suck? That doesn't make ANY sense.
Why should Microsoft be penalized because all the other operating systems are horrible, and consumers hate them? I thought we had all naive Ayn Rand type libertarians in control- don't they believe in the "free market", which lords over us like a benevolent God?
The marketplace, both fiscal and ideas, has overwhelmingly chosen Microsoft. It doesn't make sense to "blame" anyone for that... it just is. Why on earth these prosecutors (and the MS Wannabes) think having "competition" among computer operating systems would be anything more than a huge pain in the ass is a good mystery.
Here's an idea! Why not enforce competition in areas where it would ACTUALLY benefit Americans? Like, I dunno, the newspaper/magazine/tv media, or the cable industry, or the energy industry, or banking, or thousands of other areas where genuine competition would benefit people. Instead, they keep persuing this phony crap which benefits nobody.
Is *NOT* the operating system. We all know that Apple makes a better OS. Linux *could be* a better OS if it had some more polish (sorry /.ers).
You need to break the monopoly of financial and other business institutions relying on Excel and Microsoft Office. Don't tell me about Pages or Keynote or whatever other software there is. Sure, it's easy to use, very pretty... but Office is a product that Microsoft doesn't fuck around with, and produces (and I'm waiting for my hateful comments) -- AWESOMELY. It's the best software that Microsoft makes. Office 2007 is a great step forward in usability, stability, intelligence, and workflow. You can't interoperate your Pages information with your Keynote information, or vice versa. But in Excel, highlight some cells, copy, and dump it into a fully editable Word document. Then take a Visio diagram and dump it into the same Word Doc -- still editable. Collaborate easily on Sharepoint (now also part of Office). With Groove, you collaborate even further at the same time. And it's all stable, clean, and simple to use software with a powerful macro language (though I'm sure it's not the best) that allows you to automate and get information from different APIs (just walk into any financial institution and you'll see HUGE spreadsheets that download information out of Reuters and Bloomberg, email folks about updates, send updates to Blackberries formatted properly, etc).
Break THAT monopoly, and Windows won't even matter.
And don't mention Open Office. It's a joke compared to MS Office right now.
The price is always right if someone else is paying.
Is there any level of government that has a large install base of non-microsoft workstations?
no?
shocking.
News flash: Apple doesn't want to be Dell. They don't want to be in the commodity market, competing on price with razor-thin margins.
If they did that, they wouldn't be Apple. They are good at what they do, and they are not particularly good at what Dell does, so why on earth do you think they would want to try competing with them?
Dan Aris
Fun. Free. Online. RPG. BattleMaster.
The true power of Microsoft stems from its Office Suite, which is not and never will be standards compliant. Most companies absolutely must have MS Word, Excel, Powerpoint, and Outlook. There are no substitutes regardless of how feature-rich the competitors are. I've tried all of them. None work with MS Exchange, or MS-formatted documents as well, as reliably, and as stably as these programs do. Once you decide you must have MS Office you're pretty much locked into a Windows environment. Sure, you COULD get an apple, but that never really made sense from a cost/benefit perspective. As long as the world speaks ".xls" ".doc" ".eml" ".ppt" etc., we'll be using Windows.
I'd think the one guy with legs would be quite effective at kicking the butts of all the other contestants without legs, their butts already being at foot level and their having nothing to kick with. Seems a bit of a one-sided contest to me.
Oh if only the expanded context equated the one legged man as Microsoft dominating over the legless Google, Firefox and Web 2.0 instead. Then it would have made sense.
What a difference an omitted hyphen can make.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
The states that are asking for the extension of oversight should vote with their feet. Pass a measure in each state that :
That would do more to get Microsoft in line or expose their bad business practices than pursuing this legal course.
One of the real problems is that the last time there was competition in the OS Market for Intel Compatible systems was....when?
The late 80s! There are kids today who have gone through grades 1-12 and college without ever knowing a world where MS was not dominant.
Microsoft. Most of the home PC's I know of are still running W98SE (not mine, but everyone else I know). If it ain't broke, why upgrade it?
I never said Apple wants to be Dell. I'm just pointing out the reason Apple isn't Dell.
You could add...
MS == MS to that list. Apple doesn't want to be MS either, which is why antitrust is a bunch of bull as well.
Does M$ stifle the market competition? Well, I believe everybody on here will agree that yes they do. To lay claim that their strangle hold is due to games, or MSOffice suite, well that's a bunch of crap. They stifle the market because they are allowed to by the people that refuse to attempt something new or different. The fact that MSOffice holds whatever amount of the market is irrelevent. And to say that you as a user are forced to use MSOffice is bull$hit, I work in the IT department at a University where I use Open Office and the ability to save documents in an MSWord format to fool everybody into thinking I use MS Office. Nobody can tell the difference. As far as games go. If you were a corporation making games for profit then you to would make those games for the product that is in control of the market, ie Winblows, err Windows.
The geek is obsessed with retail list for Office Standard or Pro.
The small business bundle for the independent contractor, the real estate agent, the suburban dentist working out of his home.
iWork 2008 for OSX is $80 at Amazon, Office Home 2007 for Windows, $125, with a three seat license.
The chances are good that someone in your family will qualify for an even cheaper academic bundle or as a Home User under their employer's volume licensing agreement with Microsoft.
Office 2007 for the price of S&H.
Is it just a coincidence that both of their leading states are coastal regions? They'll sink twice: One point goes to global warming, another to Microsoft.
Well, the Mac is on TV, but it is most definitely _not_ an alternative. Jobs would have to let it be legally installable on whitebox hardware first. We're not just talking about letting Dell and HP make and sell Mac OS pre-installed boxes. Your local integrator has to be able to install it, without too many hurdles, and at a cost that leaves him some profit.
Apple won't allow OS X to be installed on beige box clones, at one tyme Apple did allow Mac clones but Apple lost more in lost hardware sales than they made in the sales of Mac OS licenses.. If the local integrator would make money then Apple would loose money. Apple isn't just a software company, Apple also makes and sales hardware. All to together Apple is a systems integrator, Apple just make things that work, the hardware and software work well together. And that totally ignores Microsoft. MS has already shown what it will do to those it views as competitors.
One relief I could think of that might not be unreasonable for a court to order when a company continues to behave like Microsoft. Strip them of all their patents and bar them from obtaining more patents until their market presence drops below 50%. (Trade one monopoly for another.)
What could be done to MS is to have it's Corporate Charter revoked. Corporations were originally granted charters if the corporation served the Public good. Once a corporation did not serve the public or common good it's charter could be revoked. The first corporate charter was granted to the Dutch East India Company in 1602 by the government in the Netherlands. Corporate charters allowed those who invested in the corporation to limit liability to just what they paid for for the stocks they owned.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Once you decide you must have MS Office you're pretty much locked into a Windows environment. Sure, you COULD get an apple, but that never really made sense from a cost/benefit perspective. As long as the world speaks ".xls" ".doc" ".eml" ".ppt" etc., we'll be using Windows.
Not only does MS have an Office version for Macs but new Macs come with a 30 day trial version. Actually MS has used the Mac version of Office to experiment with, if something new didn't work right in the Mac version it wouldn't be in the Windows version. Though I haven't and won't use it, the MacBook Pro I got about 4 months ago has Office 2004. The suite includes, looking at the Office subfolder in the Applications folder, Entourage, Excel, PowerPoint, and Word.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Look, there can't be a competitive market while copyright and patent monopolies exist. Microsoft have been handed monopolies on a silver platter by the same government as are now bitching about their monopoly. Well, I'm not fan of microsoft, but microsoft have just been acting rationally given idiots are willing to give them 20-year monopolies over fundamental tech. If you want to do something substantive about microsoft, then denying them and everyone else patent and copyright monopolies is the one thing that's sure to correct the market.
If you look at old posts of mine you can see how I used to support both copyrights and patents, though NOT software patents, but then I came out as opposing patents. I have to admit now I don't know if patents are good or bad. There are good things as well as bad things about them. I still support copyrights though.
Should there be a Law?
Thanks. I've programmed on Windows PCs but not on Macs or Linux, other than some scripts about 10 years ago. As for what languages I'll use, because though it's been about 10 years since I have programmed with it, I'm more familiar with C/C++ so I'll start with it. I'd like to try out Pascal as well, and have downloaded Free Pascal, and maybe Smalltalk. Before I do though I'll see what needs to be done for software written in these languages to run in Linux.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Similarly, Dell and Walmart (and Newegg and ...) are now selling computers that contain MS Windows or linux. Most people are as interested in this internal detail as they are in the brand name of their car's engine.
I don't think using car engines is appropriate in this case, car engine analogues would be more appropriate when discussing what CPU is in the PC.
You're not a normal person at all. Teenage boys know such things; engineers and mechanics know such things;
Possibly you're are. Growing up maybe a tenth of the boys, and some girls at that, worked on cars fixing and repairing them in my neighborhood. Myself, I've rebuilt engines and transmissions, repaired the breaking system, and did some body work.
Actually, Microsoft's choice of OS names will add to this confusion.
Especially with all the different versions of Vista. Linux has the same problem, only bigger as there's a bunch of distributions. Apple doesn't have as much a problem here, every 1 1/2 to 2 year releases a new OS with only 2 versions but people only hear about 1, the other is for servers.
It's entirely possible that Microsoft's downfall will be because of this. If they can't maintain their monopoly control of small-computer vendors, and those vendors are permitted to sell machines running linux, Microsoft could lose, and none of their customers would even know.
Actually I don't think small venders will have that much an impact. Most people don't get their PCs from small venders. What they do is go down to the local big box store, Best Buy, Circuit City, and what have you to buy a computer and while these stores may have a store branded computer they generally won't have one from the local computer builder. I think about the only people who buy from the local builder are those who want a specially configured PC, however if they know what they want, what parts and such more than likely they'll build it themselves. As you bring up above not many want to do that, what they want is to buy a computer and bring it open, then open the box and set it up, plug it in, and let it bootup.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Antitrust
When antitrust cases are about complex technical subjects like Microsoft and the market for PC operating systems, or Hughes/Echostar and the market for satellite TV broadcasting, it's easy just to throw up your hands and assume that the government's experts must be right. But when an antitrust case is about ice cream, you don't have to be an expert to form a solid opinion.
Take a look at the Federal Trade Commission's decision this week to block the proposed merger of Nestlé Holdings and Dreyer's Grand Ice Cream on antitrust grounds. The issues at stake are so simple that the injustice, arbitrariness, and sheer absurdity of American antitrust regulation jump out with breathtaking clarity.
The FTC decision allows the government to disrupt a voluntary and mutually sought combination of two private businesses. The decision also slashed a billion dollars in market value from Dreyer's stock as soon as it was announced.
The FTC believes "that the elimination of Dreyer's would likely lead to anticompetitive effects in the market for superpremium ice cream." Before this action, did you even know that there was something called a "market for superpremium ice cream"? Well, now you know.
Imagine, if you will, an incredibly complex diagram covering a wall in the office of a Ph. D. at the FTC. The diagram is titled "The Market for Food," and the hierarchical scheme branches from there to include every possible food group. Now erase everything that isn't under "The Market for Deserts," and then erase everything that isn't below "The Market for Frozen Deserts," and then erase everything that isn't beneath "The Market for Ice Cream." Not much of the diagram remains (we're already down to something the size of a postage stamp). But now erase "The Market for Cheap-o Ice Cream," "The Market for Regular Ice Cream," and "The Market for Premium Ice Cream." What you have left is about the size of Abraham Lincoln's nostril on a penny. This is "The Market for Superpremium Ice Cream."
In this tiny little sub-sub-sub-sub-market, Dreyer's brands Dreamery, Godiva, and Starbucks battle it out with Nestlé's Häagen Dazs and Unilever's Ben & Jerry's. The big issue, according to the FTC -- or the reason why government intervened and cost Dreyer's shareholders $1 billion -- is that "this deal will reduce the number of significant competitors from three to two" and "would likely raise prices and reduce choice for consumers." Even if you think the government should be concerned with such matters, none of this action means a thing unless you accept "The Market for Superpremium Ice Cream" as a meaningful reality.
Who's to say this market is of any importance? Who's to say it needs the government to interfere with its private business decisions?
What if consumer choice in "The Market for Superpremium Ice Cream" was narrowed to a single brand and prices became astronomical? What if "The Market for Superpremium Ice Cream" vanished from the face of the earth altogether? So what? Consumers would simply choose from the dozens of remaining premium, regular, and cheap-o ice cream brands. Or they could switch to some other desert. Let them eat superpremium cake!
Even if "The Market for Superpremium Ice Cream" needed to be policed for competition, who's to say that the correct number of competitors is two rather than three? Is it always better to have more competitors in a market?
In this country we have only two political parties of real influence. Would we be better off with more parties, as is the case in Italy and Israel? Maybe we would, and we are free to have them -- or not. But in the category of ice cream -- or rather, superpremium ice cream -- we are not free to have less than three competitors positioning for space in the superpremium ice cream aisle.
And why should we necessarily be concerned that prices might rise with a drop