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."
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 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.
As far as I know, Microsoft doesn't make a single PC. IBM's monopoly was replaced by a thriving wealth of hardware and software companies plus a monopoly for the OS. I would even add that the OS is only a fraction of the cost of a PC, so it's very arguable that IBM was replaced by what is for the most part a vast open market.
Note, this doesn't mean I think Microsoft's monopoly is good. It's very bad for the industry. Just pointing out that when you break up a monopoly (and I believe market forces broke up IBMs) then you do have a chance for improvement.
TW
I recently read where the advent of a $200 pc running Ubuntu or some other distro may soon overtake Apple's #2 spot. Most people only want simple interactive capabilities out of their computer anyway - surf the 'net, exchange email, and maybe watch some video. And I don't know about anyone else, but the price tag has always put me off of looking any further at a Mac. Problem is, most folks have never even heard of Linux as a viable alternative.
The Tea Party is just the GOP with a bag over its head.
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
Actually the computer industry was healthier in the 80's with all that competition, when it wasn't totally a monoculture (at least outside of business)
You had IBM (and clones) in the workplace, Apple in desktop publishing, Atari ST with musicians, Amiga with gamers. There were tons of small software houses making various software for all the machines. The only people paying more than 50 bucks for their word processors were IBM PC users.( I utterly loathe what the Microsoft/Intel dominance did for software prices, because business users were willing to pay lots of money for software, when they dominated the homes that meant home users were faced with higher software prices. And because home users weren't willing to pay $500 for a word processor, that led to bundling of things like Works, which helped entrench Microsoft formats in the home, as well as the office.
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.
I was always surprised that MS wasn't also slammed for Office. It is, after all, the sole reason they are a monopoly in the other 2 spaces.
Exchange exists as it does not because it's the best email/calendaring server, because it's not, but because it offered a better environment than Notes and met the X.500 requirements the government set out, well, sort of, they're actually not compliant, but that's a different story, something to do with case sensitivity....
There's far better email servers out there, and far better clients than Outlook, and far better calendaring servers. There's just not a client that ties them together as well yet, and that's a shame.
And just to bring it back on topic - the states are right - nothing has yet changed in the desktop space - MS is still the dominant by far player, the OS has yet to be replaced. (Hints of what might come after Vista are presaged by the wonders of the likes of cio.com, if you believe them. IE, by sole virtue of being "part" of the OS, is the dominant browser, but its market share appears to be rapidly falling over the past year or so, and may (hopefully) show the future trend of the OS. If you've tried the latest release of OOo, then you'll know that OOo is a viable replacement for Office, and a welcome one considering the pain that O2007 is causing some of us at least that are forced to use it.
I will predict that in the next 3-4 years, the landscape will change radically. MS will still be a powerhouse, but will just be the 400 pound gorilla, being much chastised and otherwise reduced from its former 800 pound size. ODF will probably become the standard, whether MS wants it to or not, and Office will fall rather rapidly from its perch. Look for this to happen within 12 months of 02003 being EOL'd and unsupported. Look for Apple to make further inroads in market share, as more and more people buy their laptops. Watch Dell implode as it loses the top spot. Watch Linux, probably in the form of Ubuntu, finally make inroads in marketshare, and possibly even into the business workspace. All this by the end of 2010.
Rather than mod me down - care to make your own predictions?
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Yeah, you are completely right...
There is no Linux alternative to Illustrator, InDesign and GoLive, especially when Bridge is considered. I would hate to have to think about trying to composite a book on Linux, and implementing a decent RIP with color management on Linux? Hiring a developer makes the $20,000USD Xerox or Heidelberg would charge for a decent system seem like nothing.
As for 3D design: Vectorworks does OK, but it's no AutoCAD. And I have been wanting a high-end Mac PCB package with a decent pSpice implementation for forever. gEDA for is good, but needs to mature a bit, and the reliance upon Fink for the OS X implementation can be problematic...
I think there is a place for desktop Linux in large corporations, but it is a matter of convincing people to take the leap. OpenOffice is a change, and people hate change. Novell has a Netware client for Linux. I think the problem is as much psychological as the software dependency issues mentioned in the parent post.
Sig (appended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars)
Exactly! What the continuance of the monopoly has conclusively shown is that the 'monitoring' is the biggest failure in the whole process. Did the monitoring committee look into why the market has rejected Vista?
Did they bother to find out why Vista needs so much hardware resources and makes existing hardware obsolete?
I think the regulators must force Microsoft to open source Windows 2000 and Office 2000 - the entire source code. Anyone should be free to modify Win2K and O2K and make a good desktop OS that needs just 128MB RAM to run - without breaking every known hardware and software - like Vista does.
In a year, we will see lots of genuine competition.
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
And I'd argue that an "advanced operating system" is one that is entirely open that allows the user to interact with it in any number of ways through shell access, scripting and programming in whichever way the user wants.
Correct me if I'm wrong as in 25 years of experience in the computer industry, I've never found the need to own a single Apple product, but in my little experience with OS X, most of the advanced interactive features are *LOCKED AWAY* from the user. So how does this make OS X "advanced"?
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
Thanks for the dose of reality, westlake.
...however we've got our heads jammed so far up our own asses that all we can do is argue about who's license is more free.
FOSS software, despite the best hallucinations of the slashdot crowd, isn't making a dent in MS where it counts: the Bottom Line. We need to wake up, people! We are not doing enough to break this monopoly. And it will have to be the geeks that do it, because the government won't. I realize I'm ranting, but I just get so frustrated by this smug sense of inevitability that is so often on display here. Do you think MS will go down without a fight? Do you think that a company with almost limitless cash is going to be threatened by anything less than all-out war from the FOSS community?
Here are the facts:
- No one is going to do anything about MS's monopoly.
- The monopoly will get worse.
- The only people who have a chance to break it are the geeks.
- Even then it would take a united effort from all of us.
-
I defy anyone to disprove any of my facts. Go ahead and mod me down. MS wins again.
.there is enough of everything for everyone.
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.
It's very sensible to underline the amount of work involved in a migration. However I think we're missing the point.
Wouldn't it sound terribly fascist if your public administration got a parking lot manufactured by Smart which accomodates only the measures of Smart vehicles, thereby forcing all employees and visitors to get a smart? yet we accept similar stunts in software.
Isn't it right to devote resources to make public property accessible to people with disabilities? Didn't we rightfully devote resources to ensure equal opportunities regardless the gender? So I want equal opportunity for operating systems and applications, provided they try to adhere to open standards. I'm helping even people who prefer to stay locked in, as I'm forcing MS to fight and have better pricing.
---- MISSING MISCELLANEOUS DATA SEGMENT --- [sigdash] trolololol
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.
We are at a point where we could probably do reasonably well with a large number of platforms, providing that they adhere to some basic standards.
I think this is especially the case considering that most of the platforms these days have settled on doing things in a pretty unix-y kind of way. Many file formats are the same, there are a lot of similarities in directory structures, and even a lot of programs and tools can by shared across different operating systems. I can run OpenOffice in Gnome on Solaris, or OpenOffice in Gnome on Linux, or BSD, or OpenOffice in Aqua on OSX. Even when BeOS was around (wish they'd kept going) they used a lot of Unix conventions.
The one thing that still gets to me is the lack of common filesystems. If I want to share an external hard drive between Linux, BSD, OSX, and Windows, then I pretty much have to use FAT. I don't want to use FAT. I know, there've been improvements on NTFS read/write and you can mount an HFS+ drive in Linux, but could they please work together on this? Agree on a filesystem that everyone thinks is at least semi-decent (ext3? zfs? xfs?), pursued whoever owns it to drop IP claims against competitors, and everyone support it fully. Please. It doesn't have to be the default, but just a fully supported filesystem.