I don't get it. It SOUNDS like this is alleging that Microsoft is behaving anti-competitive by suppressing their OWN product in favor of a newer one that people don't like. In other words, it appears that the suit alleges that Microsoft is conducting anti-competitive behavior against itself.
Actually, the idea here is that MS is forcing one product on everyone who buys a computer (bundled price) then charging a second price to get a different version. Theoretically, they have to refund the cost of Vista, but I'm not aware of any reason antitrust laws would require them to sell XP. More complexly, one could argue that some of the changes in Vista itself could constitute abuse as it is bundled with "anti-features" designed to benefit MS over the purchaser... but that's a lot harder to demonstrate to the courts.
You can't frame Vista and XP as competitors...
Not all antitrust abuse addresses harm to competitors. Some, such as price fixing, directly harms consumers and they can ask for reparations in civil court.
Copyright (it least in it's original form) governed the reproduction and distribution only.
You are correct... and heres where things get fuzzy. When you run software you purchased, the hardware reproduces that copyrighted work, copying it into RAM. Likewise, when you buy software on a CD, you have to copy it to your hard drive to use it. Both of those actions have been ruled by various courts to be controlled by copyright law. The bad is you need a license to make a copy to really use much software. The good is that since the software is intended to be copied, you are given more leeway in interpretation of that license than in normal situations.
Saying that you can't modify software that you've legally purchased is akin to saying you can't doodle in the margins of a book you bought.
Well, technically its like saying you can't doodle in the margins then make a copy of that book with the doodles, even if you have a license that says you can make a copy otherwise.
I'm not too fond of this interpretation of copyright and I think it goes well beyond the intended purpose of copyright, especially given the DMCA and other laws tacked on. Still, that's how the courts have tended to interpret it.
Ok, did nobody read the article stating that Mozilla did NOT want their products bundled with Windows?
One architect expressed their personal opinion that Mozilla should not be required to be bundled by the EU. Mozilla the company did not say that and one of the executives said something close to the opposite. All Mozilla the company has said is that they want input in this criminal case as the EU proceeds with it. That's what you would already know if you had RTFA!
So just what is Windows supposed to do, ship their OS with no way of getting on the web?
Microsoft already ships Windows with no way to get to the Web. Windows is one component of a computer operating system. OEMs take the OS and some other software and a CPU and an ethernet card and some RAM and disk and a motherboard and a power supply and a video card and a display and input devices, put them all together and sell them. The law says just because one company has a monopoly on one of those components they are not legally allowed to force OEMs to buy a different component from them. Just as MS can't require Dell to buy MS brand CPUs with every copy of Windows they can't make Dell buy IE bundled with Windows. They have to be offered to the OEM separately so all CPU and browser makers are competing fairly. Without a CPU Windows can't get to the Web which is why OEMs create bundles to sell.
That's just silly.
If you have no idea what the article says, what antitrust law is, or how the free market works, maybe it seems that way to you. The solution is to go find out before forming your opinions.
It strikes me as somewhat hypocritical for Mozilla to join the suit against MS while at the same time saying they don't want any of the viable fixes to be applied.
What "viable fixes" are you talking about? Did you read the same article as the rest of us?
"viable fixes" - I read more than the article, I read the comments and other related articles:
1: bundling
2: startup choice of installation (within the "setting up your computer" process)
3: separate sale of the browser
Umm, how do you know Mozilla doesn't support those? They haven't even made comments as to what reparations they think would work. All they did was ask the EU if they could make comments when this criminal case went forward. I don't see how that can be construed as hypocritical in any way.
"handout" - not speaking of money but rather of their inclusion in the apparently positive for the little guy situation at the end of the suit.
That's not a handout it's just being protected from crimes and the results of crime.
objecting in this specific case" - I think that there are some companies that should have monopolies (my local water utility as I don't see any reason to have the street torn up every time someone decides they are going into business as a water producer). I am not saying MS is like the water company but they are certainly close in my estimation.
Who's saying MS can't have a monopoly? Having a monopoly is illegal. Abusing a monopoly is illegal. How do you feel about your water bill going up and being shipped several cases of bottled water a month from the water company? Sound good to you? Sound fair to current bottled water producers?
The other browser companies are more akin to the Ozarka water guy who comes around to your business once a week to give you a new jug.
They were, until MS bundled their own browser and undermined the market. Now they're the ones who make bottled water that doesn't taste like ass and give it to you with ads on it. Then you drink it while throwing away the crap you're forced to pay for anyway from MS.
I agree with you on the telephone concept but it does not directly correlate (I am not "renting" my browser as all updates are free).
Free is marketing. You pay MS for Windows and part of that money goes to pay for development of IE. That's bundled pricing, not free.
It would seem to me to be more akin to a requirement that Standard Oil remove all Class B oils from their product before drawing crude up out of the ground. To make such a requirement would be ridiculous and effectively cripple the company completely. Instead, of course, Standard Oil changed its practices, stopped being a monopoly and eventually merged with other oil companies decades ago.
I'm not familiar with the oil business and do not understand your analogy. I think the water company one works though. There is no reason MS can't remove IE and ship and market Windows and IE separately to OEMs. They certainly managed to avoid losing their monopoly, so I don't see a lot of other choices on the part of regulators in the EU.
MS can change some of its practices (like the media player) but in the end, the level of system integration with IE is too much to change without completely changing the MS business model.
I strongly disagree. IE is almost completely separated in the latest versions of Windows and the HTML library could be made a plug-in without a lot of difficulty if it was a requirement. Sure MS would claim it is impossible, but any competent architect know otherwise. It's already been replaced by third party projects. I don't think it is too much to ask that MS comply with the laws.
Yeah, that crazy EU government and their enforcing the laws... the same laws we enforced against MS for the same crime which they still haven't stopped committing.
Laws which are only enforced against Microsoft (not EU companies).
Ever bother to actually look for facts instead of making idiotic assumptions? The EU has repeatedly enforced antitrust law against European companies, including cases for bundling like the high profile Telfonica case last year.
And you can't create laws which violate your treaty obligations.
Sure you can, countries do it all the time; not that it matters in this case.
The conditions imposed on MS fairly obviously violate the Berne Convention. If I was MS I would take this to the WTO.
Yeah right. It's not even close to violating the Berne Convention and the US and EU have both already convicted them of very similar antitrust abuse in the past. The EU laws being enforced are almost identical to the US ones.
If they don't think the law is just, the right way to solve it is to change public opinion and get the law changed by the democratic process.
How is lobbying "changing the law by democratic process"?
Do you see "lobbying" in my post? You quoted it, and did not notice I said they should change public opinion and never mentioned lobbying? This is a terrible strawman.
These "crimes" are the results of complaints by European and other companies that they're were losing money to MS.
Reporting a crime that is illegally costing you money now makes it your fault? Blame the victim much?
It's those companies (which I'm sure do their own lobbying), that are the problem here.
Oh yeah, breaking the law isn't a problem, reporting it is. Are you an astroturfer or just an idiot?
I'm not saying that the current laws aren't the correct methods however the application is faulty. The only real way to stop Microsoft from being in court every few years is by banning it completely from bundling emerging technologies with it's juggernaut.
The law bans them from bundling anything that will undermine another market, but MS has pretty much ignored the law. The only way to really prevent them is to break them up so they no longer have a monopoly, but EU won't for diplomatic reasons and the US won't because the MS donates too much to both major parties.
And as far as the mass murderer analogy goes you don't slap him on the wrist you stake him down and beat him for every murder he has committed.
The EU has been extremely lenient so far, but we'll have to see what they do in this case.
Since OEMs can't buy OS X, it is not considered part of the market. Apple bypasses the market and instead competes against OEMs in the computer system market.
This is both splitting hairs and wrong. Windows, at least in the home computer market, has been traditionally pitted against "bundled" systems like Macintosh and the Amiga.
You are 100% wrong. Dells and HPs and Sony computers have been pitted against Amiga and Macintosh. Windows is simply one component of those systems. It's akin to arguing that Soundblaster computers are competing against Macintoshes.
To argue that this competition doesn't count is to argue that Windows has NEVER had any competition except Linux and maybe OS/2.
That's pretty much true. MacOS was briefly a direct competitor when they licensed it to OEMs long ago, but that did not last. As a desktop OS supplier MS's largest competitors have been OS/2 BeOS, Next, and Linux. If you are CEO of Dell, what other options do you have?
By your reasoning Microsoft is clearly a "natural monopoly" because nobody has ever tried to compete with them (again, Linux doesn't count).
Not at all. Many companies have tried to compete against them, but due to illegal tactics and the high barrier to entry none have been very successful.
Remember, the monopoly determination is based on the behavior of Microsoft...
Monopoly status isn't based on behavior, but upon market share and influence. What they do with that influence determines if they've abused said potential monopoly.
> Bundling an essential application with an operating system is not an unfair practice.
In this case it is.
Based on what OBJECTIVE criteria? The essence of your opinion is that "Microsoft is bad and must be continually punished because I don't like them."
Based upon the fact that they bundled a monopolized product and one from a separate market in violation of the law and in such a way as it undermined competition. Why is it so hard for you to grasp. MS broke the law. They're still breaking the law. They were convicted and will be convicted again. If you'd bother to understand the issue of the free market that antitrust law protects this would be obvious to even you.
They aren't being sued, they're being prosecuted for breaking the law.
No, they're being sued.
Why am I bothering to discuss this with you? Antitrust law is criminal law. The prosecution sometimes arises from civil suits and is taken over by the feds, but not in this particular case in the EU. If you can't even get such a simple fact right, why should I bother? You are willfully ignorant.
First, the US case is basically done...
Which has jack and shit to do with the EU CASE WE ARE DISCUSSING!
I'm less familiar with the EU case, but based on my reading it's sour grapes.
Gee, I hadn't noticed. You admit to being ignorant and don't even understand the concept behind the laws, then decide to provide your uneducated opinion and assert incorrect facts. Go educate yourself. You don't even seem to know what the undermined market is. You're an embarrassment to everyone who bothers to read before forming an opinion and before trying to convince others they are correct. Just go away.
Nearly every non operating system critical piece of software I mentioned had a preexisting market before it was part of the Microsoft operating system.
Agreed. Most of the ones you mention should, legally, be marketed to OEMs separately by Microsoft.
If you don't like itunes then look at winamp before it or realplayer.
Yeah, hanging in there at about 25% and steady, even when by default WMP was ripping files to WMA and adding DRM and a significant number of people (most of whom had iPods) had to rip their entire collections twice. I guess Im not seeing how the numbers favor bundling not being a huge factor, in fact the largest factor. Hows mplayer doing on Windows? Is WMP significantly better? Why the disparity then?
My point through this whole fiasco is taking microsoft to point for it's latest monopolistic charge is like putting a mass murderer on trial for killing one person.
So we should let the mass murderer go after the courts gave them a slap on the wrist for one murder? How does that make sense? By your analogy, the murderer is still killing people right now.
The issue doesn't lie in the fact that they bundle product x with windows. Instead it lies with the fact that the proliferation of windows itself causes any program that is bundled with it to become the De facto standard.
Which is why it is illegal to bundle a monopolized product with an unmonopolized product. Why do you think we have antitrust laws?
It has come to the point where any action by Microsoft in relation to new features or software can be viewed as an abuse of their monopoly.
No. They can create innovative new technologies and new markets without problems. They can create and feature or product they want and market it in any way other than tying it to Windows.
The free market has done a bang up job of protecting itself lately.
What free market?
. How exactly does a company get to 90% market share without any significant negative action against it?
Gaining a monopoly is not illegal or bad for the market by itself. You can simply make the best product and thus gain tons of market share. Should we punish companies for being successful in a market?
As I see it removing IE from windows at this point would do nothing but provide Microsoft with another revenue stream in the form of IE on cd for 10-20 bucks.
Then you disagree with a century of economics and pretty much all the experts. Fixing the market will take more than unbundling IE and Windows, but once accomplished can revitalize the Web browser market and innovation in Web technologies.
IE is still being used because people are familiar with it.
Partly yes, but a lot of people don't even know there are alternatives.
I've gone so far as removing IE manually (a difficult process that should change) and then come back later to see that users have downloaded IE "because it's easier".
Yeah, people don't like change and some legitimately benefit from using IE because they need to access sites that only work properly using it. Both are problems to be solved in fixing the market. I don't see them as arguments against fixing the market.
Note, you still haven't answered my questions from my last post. What are you proposing as an alternative to enforcing the current laws? Why do you think those laws are not helpful and why do you think MS is not governed by the same economic principals as past monopolists?
Assuming your[sic] saying windows is the monopolized market...
I am and so are the courts.
...then our original premise holds true all bundled software with windows is either illegal or not illegal.
Not really. Only products from separate, pre-existing markets at the time of the monopolization and bundling. So any feature or application MS had in Windows before there was a separate market for it is safe. Anything they added afterwards is illegal unless sold separately to OEMs.
...the fact that IE is popular has nothing to do with it afterall wmp is bundled with windows but it hasn't stopped itunes popularity.
Way to pick a special case. iTunes is bundled with and tied to iPods and has gained market share almost entirely because of that. The EU is still investigating if the iPod has enough influence to constitute a monopoly in its own right, but it is a close thing.
The fact is that sometimes the bundled piece is more popular than other options...
You're missing the point. This isn't about preventing popularity. This is about insuring competition so the best product in a market wins and so developers are motivated to innovate by greed. Sure browser developers can implement cool new technologies in their browser, but it doesn't help them gain market share because Web developers can't implement those technologies because they'd lose the 70% of people using IE. So making a Web browser better (everyone but IE supports SVG now, which is a significant improvement in quality and bandwidth) but that doesn't gain them any market share because IE is bundled and interoperability is broken. What motivation do browser developers have to innovate if it does not help them gain market share? Why should MS innovate if it does not lose them market share. These laws apply to all markets because historically this same thing happened. Monopolists bundled and innovation stalled and the industry suffered. See AT&T and the state of telephones as an example.
...does not mean it should be removed so long as it doesn't stop users from acquiring or using a competitive product.
No, it should be prevented from being bundled so if it is a better product it will be more popular and if it is a worse product it will be less popular and everyone will be motivated to improve by simple greed. That's how the free market works. Why are you opposed to letting the free market work using the same laws we've been using for a hundred years? Why are the laws that have saved our bacon over and over no longer good ones? Why do you think all the economists wrong on this one? Why should MS not only be an exception to these laws, but be allowed to break them rather than have them overturned before they break them? I just don't see any reason why this criminal behavior should be allowed either from an economics or legal perspective. What, exactly, are you proposing we change the laws to?
The same laws apply to everyone and have been on the books for a hundred years. How is that not fair?
If MS can't bundle IE, then it's only fair to extend that to all the other apps they bundle (which presumably also give them an advantage over competitors).
It applies only to applications where there was a pre-existing, separate market before MS began bundling. That does include several applications MS bundles now, such as WMP which they have already been convicted with regard to.
And the same thing should also go for Ubuntu and Apple, both of which also bundle a specific browser and many apps with their OS's too.
The same laws do apply to Apple and Canonical, but not to OS X and Ubuntu since neither of those is a monopolized product. You can't tie a monopolized product and a product from a separate, pre-existing market. Everyone has to obey that law. Apple has come under investigation to see if their iPod constitutes monopoly influence on the portable, digital music player market and if the courts decide it does they will have to deal with their tying of iTunes, the iTunes store, and their DRM. It's the same law applied in the same way to everyone. You just have to know what the law is and preferably know why it was written.
The hypocrisy that surrounds this whole debate, and the level of anti-MS vitriol spewed forth anytime someone brings up the fact that they bundle what has become a basic app (a simple web browser) with their OS is absolutely ludicrous.
What's ludicrous is the apparent ignorance that surrounds this debate. I mean doesn't anybody think they should find out what antitrust law is before they come here and tell us why all the experts are wrong about it? What would you think of anyone who did not bother to find out about a subject before coming to you and asserting that the experts and you are wrong about it? I suspect at least some of the comments here are astroturf, but a lot are just ignorant people mislead by astroturfers or opinionated people too lazy to cure their own ignorance before forming an opinion.
...but no one in their right mind would release an OS anymore WITHOUT a web browser
Please. OS's are just one component of a computer system, along with CPUs, applications, monitors, and mice. Very few individuals buy components and assemble them on their own and all of those people are competent enough to install a browser. Would you argue it should be legal for MS to require OEMs to buy an MS brand CPU to go with every copy of Windows? After all, no one would ship a computer without a CPU and it is even more vital to using an OS than a Web browser.
Singling out MS and asking them to do that is unfair harassment.
MS singled themselves out by repeatedly breaking the laws everyone else goes out of their way to comply with. Claiming they are being singled out simply demonstrates you did not bother to learn about antitrust law enough to know why MS's actions are illegal and the actions of other companies are legal, something obvious to anyone who bothered to understand the purpose of antitrust law in the first place.
That is EXACTLY the counter to their argument. If bundling the browser is bad, ALL software bundles must be considered bad.
If firing a gun is bad in one case, then all cases of firing a gun must be bad. What, um, interesting logic you have there.
Well using your analogy then the browser must be the heart or head and the rest of the parts are the extremeties and non vital organs so yeah in this context all cases of firing the gun are bad.
Nope. In my analogy a firing a gun is bundling. Aiming a gun at a person is having a monopoly.
Bundling a monopolized market and an un-monopolized market undermines the second market, breaks capitalism, and is illegal. Bundling products from any other markets is legal. This isn't rocket science.
The vast majority of PCs sold are done so through vendors. Vendors already have the ability to "replace" IE (it still has to be there for compatibility reasons, but the user doesn't have to know, and all actions that will invoke a browser will invoke whatever the vendor wants). None do it.
Sure they can, but they have been given technological and market based reasons not to. Supporting two browsers can cost more. They have to make an effort to change the browser. Significant numbers of Web pages only work in IE. IE is pretty much impossible to completely remove from some versions of Windows.
All of the above are the result of MS's crime and all were intentional based upon internal communications revealed in previous cases. Antitrust abuse isn't about making it impossible to go with something else, it is about undermining the market so that when people or companies act in their own best interests they choose the inferior product. Sure, when AT&T was charging you thousands of dollars to rent a telephone you could go out and buy a different phone to use, but their rarity made them expensive and the fact that you still had to pay AT&T rent meant you were paying twice. Still you could do it, it just wasn't a good idea financially. That doesn't make it any less of a crime.
So how exactly would a plugin architecture help? You can already plug in an entire browser, and its very, very easy. And no one do it.
It would allow browser makers to completely remove IE and replace it with their own while making it necessary for developers of Web technologies incorporated in other products follow Web standards. It basically helps removes the illegal double support cost incentive and a small part of the illegal broken pages incentive.
Make a law that force OEMs to put another browser? Sure. As long as IE is still bundled if you buy a retail version of the OS. I don't want to have clean disks look like HP or Toshiba's restore disks.
That may or may not be part of the remedy, but it isn't going to be based on what is most convenient for you, but what will restore the market to proper innovation and competition and be fair to other browser makers and OEMs. If you are inconvenienced, well that sucks, but customers are often inconvenienced when the criminal actions of people they do business with catch up with those criminals. We don't let criminals out of jail to run their shops, despite the inconvenience to their customers.
That said, IE dominating has little to do with it being bundled.
I think that's complete bullshit, but there's an easy way to find out. If it won't hurt MS's market share, then we can just unbundle it right? No harm to MS no reason not to to it. Of course MS has fought tooth and nail to keep it bundled and their internal documents claim exactly the opposite of what you do and everything we know about economics runs counter to your belief.
IE was wiping the floor with all alternatives back then...
Irrelevant. It doesn't matter how they were doing then. It matters how they were doing at all times including today. Just because someone had a good product once does not mean it should hold the most market share today. The point of the free market and competition is to provide incentive to all parties to continually innovate and continually make the best product.
Compared to that, a perfectly ACID2/ACID3/W3C compliant browser with all other related standard technologies (like vector graphics) isn't that big of a step up from IE.
Which is part of the problem. Innovation is stifled by antitrust abuse so we have not moved forward very much in what should be one of the fastest evolving technology segments.
By then it was too late.
The point of a competitive free market is it is never too late. It is a constant process. That's why it works better t
What you call "law" is also bound up with politics and corporate lobbying.
Antitrust laws have been on the books a hundred years now. They've been enforced against other companies for bundling as recently as a few months ago. The only lobbying has been MS paying off US politicians to let them off from the same crime there. The only politics has been the EU giving MS preferential treatment and bending over backwards to give them the benefit of the doubt to be diplomatic. Get a clue.
i think this is just bullshit. just because a product is highly successful, it has to lose features to maintain competition?
No, you just can't add features beyond that bundled with it, if there is already someone doing it. You can make and sell them in fair competition with everyone else, separate from your monopoly. MS bundled IE after they had a monopoly and after there were already people out there making money from browsers. Any normal company in any other industry would go out of their way to have the Web browser made by a different division and sold by a different sales guy to avoid any antitrust issues. MS instead decided to try to make it unremovable then donate lots of cash to politicians. That's about as crooked as you can get.
Lets be clear that we're not talking about a monopoly of a commodity, but rather the issue of bundling. Bundling a commodity with a monopoly is not an antitrust violation.
What! Bundling a commodity is a more clear antitrust violation, since it is clearly a separate, preexisting market. Do you have any understanding of antitrust law or are you just making this crap up?
And it's Microsoft's fault that the web is broken?
Ever hear of "embrace, extend, extinguish"? That was the plan revealed in the first court case where MS planned on breaking Web interoperability to prevent threats to their OS. Yeah, since they planned it and broke the law to make it happen I'd say that's there fault. How can you argue otherwise?
If MS were to disappear tomorrow would the web be a lot better?
Yes. Their bundling of IE is the one thing preventing me and many others from being able to implement newer standards supported by every other browser.
There is absolutely NO indication (and I mean none, zero, nada, zilch) that there is anyone out there innovating on the web who is held back due to MS.
Please, that's one of the main reasons for antitrust law. Bundling like this always stifles innovation because it removes the main motivation fo people to move forward, good old fashioned greed. I suppose there was no evidence that AT&T's monopoly was holding back the telephone handset market either. Just because nothing significantly changed for a decade in either high-tech market is no evidence huh? What a joke.
Give me one example of something that is a quantum breakthrough that might exist if MS had not existed or if they closed up shop tomorrow.
If IE were gone tomorrow, I'd start implementing SVG in Web pages the day after and make pages that load significantly faster while presenting images that scale better for both mobile devices and higher resolution displays.
The fact of the matter is that Firefox, Opera, and even IE are simply incremental improvements over Mosaic. You'd think that in the past 15 years at least ONE product would have done some huge innovation, even if it was shut down later.
First, your equivocation fails. IE is the only one that has refused to implement newer technologies. The one company with the most money somehow can't keep up with hobbyists? Yeah, I'm sure that's not intentional, especially in light of their internal memos saying it was.
Second, the point of antitrust law is to prevent markets from being undermined because when they are, there is little or no motivation for innovation. Claiming that current Web browsers are only incremental improvements is demonstrating the problem, not proving it does not exist. How many technologies would exist and be implemented today if developers did not have to cater to the 70% of the market still on IE? How much faster would the other browsers have advanced if such advancement was not made moot by IE?
In fact, one could argue that the biggest leap in innovation, Ajax, happened by MS.
Yeah, because of their illegal action they're the only one with the ability to push an innovation through genius. Everyone else has implemented lots of cool technologies, but Web developers can't use them because doing so ignores 70% of the market. THAT'S THE FRICKING PROBLEM!
The point is, a browser is now standard feature of an OS, just like an OS is more or less standard feature of a personal computer, an engine is to a car, cables come with electronic appliances, etc.
It is a component of a complete computer system, certainly, but there is no technical reason it has to be a feature of the OS. MS can architect a plug-in HTML engine and browser applications are already almost entirely separate in Vista. Just because MS has monopolized one component of a personal computer does not mean it should get a free pass for providing another and, in fact, doing so causes continuing harm to innovation and consumers.
Yes, back then, it was not so, Microsoft bundling IE hurt competition, and they should pay for that if the law thinks it did not pay enough already. Thats fine. But unbundling it in today's context is ridiculous, times changed.
How so? Bundling IE is still the number one thing holding back Web technologies and retarding innovation. It is continuing to cost Opera and other developers money. The problem is ongoing and I don't see how letting the abuse continue will help. If MS has to compete on a level playing field consumers win and the best browser producer wins. Thats competition in a free market? Letting the market remain undermined is the worst of all possible ideas. Its like extreme socialism except where they aren't even trying to act in the best interests of the people. It is uncompetitive and profiteering. How do you expect Web browsers to get better and new Web technologies to get better if a monopolist can foist their inferior product on people and has no motivation to continually improve it and significant financial motivation to keep it broken in certain ways?
You don't get to just define something as having a market because you try to sell it. Can I decide to sell a new type of SATA driver and claim there's now a SATA driver market?
no, you have to actually profit from it, not necessarily sell it. Then there's a market. That said, just because their is a market does not mean it is market that matters to antitrust abuse. Monopolists are only banned from bundling with pre-existing markets.
Can I try to sell a Windows taskbar replacement and them claim there's a taskbar market now?
Only if you actually sell it, but it doesn't matter because MS already has one bundled before you created the market.
You're like a neo-con - you keep arguing the same arguments, but essentially you're just megaphoning. None of your arguments hold water and many of them are outright preposterous.
Yeah, it's terrible when someone argues using the facts and you have none of your own, huh. Maybe you should try educating yourself before arguing your nonsense.
The idea of selling an operating system without a browser is simply untenable from both a technical and a marketing perspective.
People have already implemented other browsers and implemented the Windows APIs for an HTML engine. As for selling their OS, yeah that should be hard for Microsoft. I'm sure Dell and Sony and HP will all switch to Linux immediately. What a joke. And as if we should care. This is punishment for a crime genius.
The correct approach is that OEMs can install any other browser they want, and the end-user can install any other browser.
Which does not solve the problem at all. Hopefully the EU council is a lot brighter than you are.
Explain how Microsoft is a monopoly now. In the OS market, you have Linux, OSX, etc.
Legally monopoly influence is usually considered around 70%. Windows has a much larger share of installs than that on the desktop, but you also have to take into account the market share instead of install base. Since OEMs can't buy OS X, it is not considered part of the market. Apple bypasses the market and instead competes against OEMs in the computer system market. It makes it pretty obvious. Also both the US and EU courts have already ruled they do have monopoly influence, so it is no longer a question.
Bundling an essential application with an operating system is not an unfair practice.
In this case it is.
Should they get sued for including notepad too?
They aren't being sued, they're being prosecuted for breaking the law. And, yes, MS should stop bundling notepad and let OEMs pick what text editor to include on computers they ship. Then MS might be motivated to make notepad decent and properly handle unicode and line endings so OEMs would pick it.
If an OS can't include an internet browser, then what can it include?
Any software that did not have a pre-existing market before they had a monopoly and started bundling a competitor. Is it so terrible to expect MS to compete on even ground with other software makers for products other than their OS? Why do you hate free market competition? What are you, a commie:)
Well... ok, but OEMs *could* already do that right now and they're choosing not to. What makes you think a lawsuit would change anything?
There are several reasons they don't and this criminal prosecution (this is NOT a lawsuit) was started to address them. Difficulties are removing IE, intentionally broken Web sites and services, and lack of motivation on the part of OEMs all of which are the result of the antitrust abuse. A proper remedy should address all these.
This is a lie. The web browser is a part of the operating system product.
From an economics perspective this is not the case. There is a separate market for Web browsers that do not come with the OS and that's what matters both legally and in terms of if the bundling undermines the free market.
And weren't the original complaints against Microsoft by the EU around the browser being tied to the OS?
No, the US case was, but the first EU case was with regard to bundling Windows Media Player and tying to Windows server. This is the first time the EU has addressed the browser issue. I think they were hoping the US would do something effective.
actually, the reason that my analogy sucked, is because you pay for the stereo. The browser is free...
Ha! Yeah and those two for one sales at the store, the second one really is free. IE developers are volunteers who don't get paid by the money you pay when you buy Windows, right. IE is just as free as the car stereo or any other component of your car.
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I don't get it. It SOUNDS like this is alleging that Microsoft is behaving anti-competitive by suppressing their OWN product in favor of a newer one that people don't like. In other words, it appears that the suit alleges that Microsoft is conducting anti-competitive behavior against itself.
Actually, the idea here is that MS is forcing one product on everyone who buys a computer (bundled price) then charging a second price to get a different version. Theoretically, they have to refund the cost of Vista, but I'm not aware of any reason antitrust laws would require them to sell XP. More complexly, one could argue that some of the changes in Vista itself could constitute abuse as it is bundled with "anti-features" designed to benefit MS over the purchaser... but that's a lot harder to demonstrate to the courts.
You can't frame Vista and XP as competitors...
Not all antitrust abuse addresses harm to competitors. Some, such as price fixing, directly harms consumers and they can ask for reparations in civil court.
Copyright (it least in it's original form) governed the reproduction and distribution only.
You are correct... and heres where things get fuzzy. When you run software you purchased, the hardware reproduces that copyrighted work, copying it into RAM. Likewise, when you buy software on a CD, you have to copy it to your hard drive to use it. Both of those actions have been ruled by various courts to be controlled by copyright law. The bad is you need a license to make a copy to really use much software. The good is that since the software is intended to be copied, you are given more leeway in interpretation of that license than in normal situations.
Saying that you can't modify software that you've legally purchased is akin to saying you can't doodle in the margins of a book you bought.
Well, technically its like saying you can't doodle in the margins then make a copy of that book with the doodles, even if you have a license that says you can make a copy otherwise.
I'm not too fond of this interpretation of copyright and I think it goes well beyond the intended purpose of copyright, especially given the DMCA and other laws tacked on. Still, that's how the courts have tended to interpret it.
Ok, did nobody read the article stating that Mozilla did NOT want their products bundled with Windows?
One architect expressed their personal opinion that Mozilla should not be required to be bundled by the EU. Mozilla the company did not say that and one of the executives said something close to the opposite. All Mozilla the company has said is that they want input in this criminal case as the EU proceeds with it. That's what you would already know if you had RTFA!
So just what is Windows supposed to do, ship their OS with no way of getting on the web?
Microsoft already ships Windows with no way to get to the Web. Windows is one component of a computer operating system. OEMs take the OS and some other software and a CPU and an ethernet card and some RAM and disk and a motherboard and a power supply and a video card and a display and input devices, put them all together and sell them. The law says just because one company has a monopoly on one of those components they are not legally allowed to force OEMs to buy a different component from them. Just as MS can't require Dell to buy MS brand CPUs with every copy of Windows they can't make Dell buy IE bundled with Windows. They have to be offered to the OEM separately so all CPU and browser makers are competing fairly. Without a CPU Windows can't get to the Web which is why OEMs create bundles to sell.
That's just silly.
If you have no idea what the article says, what antitrust law is, or how the free market works, maybe it seems that way to you. The solution is to go find out before forming your opinions.
It strikes me as somewhat hypocritical for Mozilla to join the suit against MS while at the same time saying they don't want any of the viable fixes to be applied.
What "viable fixes" are you talking about? Did you read the same article as the rest of us?
"viable fixes" - I read more than the article, I read the comments and other related articles: 1: bundling 2: startup choice of installation (within the "setting up your computer" process) 3: separate sale of the browser
Umm, how do you know Mozilla doesn't support those? They haven't even made comments as to what reparations they think would work. All they did was ask the EU if they could make comments when this criminal case went forward. I don't see how that can be construed as hypocritical in any way.
"handout" - not speaking of money but rather of their inclusion in the apparently positive for the little guy situation at the end of the suit.
That's not a handout it's just being protected from crimes and the results of crime.
objecting in this specific case" - I think that there are some companies that should have monopolies (my local water utility as I don't see any reason to have the street torn up every time someone decides they are going into business as a water producer). I am not saying MS is like the water company but they are certainly close in my estimation.
Who's saying MS can't have a monopoly? Having a monopoly is illegal. Abusing a monopoly is illegal. How do you feel about your water bill going up and being shipped several cases of bottled water a month from the water company? Sound good to you? Sound fair to current bottled water producers?
The other browser companies are more akin to the Ozarka water guy who comes around to your business once a week to give you a new jug.
They were, until MS bundled their own browser and undermined the market. Now they're the ones who make bottled water that doesn't taste like ass and give it to you with ads on it. Then you drink it while throwing away the crap you're forced to pay for anyway from MS.
I agree with you on the telephone concept but it does not directly correlate (I am not "renting" my browser as all updates are free).
Free is marketing. You pay MS for Windows and part of that money goes to pay for development of IE. That's bundled pricing, not free.
It would seem to me to be more akin to a requirement that Standard Oil remove all Class B oils from their product before drawing crude up out of the ground. To make such a requirement would be ridiculous and effectively cripple the company completely. Instead, of course, Standard Oil changed its practices, stopped being a monopoly and eventually merged with other oil companies decades ago.
I'm not familiar with the oil business and do not understand your analogy. I think the water company one works though. There is no reason MS can't remove IE and ship and market Windows and IE separately to OEMs. They certainly managed to avoid losing their monopoly, so I don't see a lot of other choices on the part of regulators in the EU.
MS can change some of its practices (like the media player) but in the end, the level of system integration with IE is too much to change without completely changing the MS business model.
I strongly disagree. IE is almost completely separated in the latest versions of Windows and the HTML library could be made a plug-in without a lot of difficulty if it was a requirement. Sure MS would claim it is impossible, but any competent architect know otherwise. It's already been replaced by third party projects. I don't think it is too much to ask that MS comply with the laws.
Yeah, that crazy EU government and their enforcing the laws... the same laws we enforced against MS for the same crime which they still haven't stopped committing.
Laws which are only enforced against Microsoft (not EU companies).
Ever bother to actually look for facts instead of making idiotic assumptions? The EU has repeatedly enforced antitrust law against European companies, including cases for bundling like the high profile Telfonica case last year.
And you can't create laws which violate your treaty obligations.
Sure you can, countries do it all the time; not that it matters in this case.
The conditions imposed on MS fairly obviously violate the Berne Convention. If I was MS I would take this to the WTO.
Yeah right. It's not even close to violating the Berne Convention and the US and EU have both already convicted them of very similar antitrust abuse in the past. The EU laws being enforced are almost identical to the US ones.
If they don't think the law is just, the right way to solve it is to change public opinion and get the law changed by the democratic process.
How is lobbying "changing the law by democratic process"?
Do you see "lobbying" in my post? You quoted it, and did not notice I said they should change public opinion and never mentioned lobbying? This is a terrible strawman.
These "crimes" are the results of complaints by European and other companies that they're were losing money to MS.
Reporting a crime that is illegally costing you money now makes it your fault? Blame the victim much?
It's those companies (which I'm sure do their own lobbying), that are the problem here.
Oh yeah, breaking the law isn't a problem, reporting it is. Are you an astroturfer or just an idiot?
I'm not saying that the current laws aren't the correct methods however the application is faulty. The only real way to stop Microsoft from being in court every few years is by banning it completely from bundling emerging technologies with it's juggernaut.
The law bans them from bundling anything that will undermine another market, but MS has pretty much ignored the law. The only way to really prevent them is to break them up so they no longer have a monopoly, but EU won't for diplomatic reasons and the US won't because the MS donates too much to both major parties.
And as far as the mass murderer analogy goes you don't slap him on the wrist you stake him down and beat him for every murder he has committed.
The EU has been extremely lenient so far, but we'll have to see what they do in this case.
Since OEMs can't buy OS X, it is not considered part of the market. Apple bypasses the market and instead competes against OEMs in the computer system market.
This is both splitting hairs and wrong. Windows, at least in the home computer market, has been traditionally pitted against "bundled" systems like Macintosh and the Amiga.
You are 100% wrong. Dells and HPs and Sony computers have been pitted against Amiga and Macintosh. Windows is simply one component of those systems. It's akin to arguing that Soundblaster computers are competing against Macintoshes.
To argue that this competition doesn't count is to argue that Windows has NEVER had any competition except Linux and maybe OS/2.
That's pretty much true. MacOS was briefly a direct competitor when they licensed it to OEMs long ago, but that did not last. As a desktop OS supplier MS's largest competitors have been OS/2 BeOS, Next, and Linux. If you are CEO of Dell, what other options do you have?
By your reasoning Microsoft is clearly a "natural monopoly" because nobody has ever tried to compete with them (again, Linux doesn't count).
Not at all. Many companies have tried to compete against them, but due to illegal tactics and the high barrier to entry none have been very successful.
Remember, the monopoly determination is based on the behavior of Microsoft...
Monopoly status isn't based on behavior, but upon market share and influence. What they do with that influence determines if they've abused said potential monopoly.
> Bundling an essential application with an operating system is not an unfair practice.
In this case it is.
Based on what OBJECTIVE criteria? The essence of your opinion is that "Microsoft is bad and must be continually punished because I don't like them."
Based upon the fact that they bundled a monopolized product and one from a separate market in violation of the law and in such a way as it undermined competition. Why is it so hard for you to grasp. MS broke the law. They're still breaking the law. They were convicted and will be convicted again. If you'd bother to understand the issue of the free market that antitrust law protects this would be obvious to even you.
They aren't being sued, they're being prosecuted for breaking the law.
No, they're being sued.
Why am I bothering to discuss this with you? Antitrust law is criminal law. The prosecution sometimes arises from civil suits and is taken over by the feds, but not in this particular case in the EU. If you can't even get such a simple fact right, why should I bother? You are willfully ignorant.
First, the US case is basically done...
Which has jack and shit to do with the EU CASE WE ARE DISCUSSING!
I'm less familiar with the EU case, but based on my reading it's sour grapes.
Gee, I hadn't noticed. You admit to being ignorant and don't even understand the concept behind the laws, then decide to provide your uneducated opinion and assert incorrect facts. Go educate yourself. You don't even seem to know what the undermined market is. You're an embarrassment to everyone who bothers to read before forming an opinion and before trying to convince others they are correct. Just go away.
Nearly every non operating system critical piece of software I mentioned had a preexisting market before it was part of the Microsoft operating system.
Agreed. Most of the ones you mention should, legally, be marketed to OEMs separately by Microsoft.
If you don't like itunes then look at winamp before it or realplayer.
Yeah, hanging in there at about 25% and steady, even when by default WMP was ripping files to WMA and adding DRM and a significant number of people (most of whom had iPods) had to rip their entire collections twice. I guess Im not seeing how the numbers favor bundling not being a huge factor, in fact the largest factor. Hows mplayer doing on Windows? Is WMP significantly better? Why the disparity then?
My point through this whole fiasco is taking microsoft to point for it's latest monopolistic charge is like putting a mass murderer on trial for killing one person.
So we should let the mass murderer go after the courts gave them a slap on the wrist for one murder? How does that make sense? By your analogy, the murderer is still killing people right now.
The issue doesn't lie in the fact that they bundle product x with windows. Instead it lies with the fact that the proliferation of windows itself causes any program that is bundled with it to become the De facto standard.
Which is why it is illegal to bundle a monopolized product with an unmonopolized product. Why do you think we have antitrust laws?
It has come to the point where any action by Microsoft in relation to new features or software can be viewed as an abuse of their monopoly.
No. They can create innovative new technologies and new markets without problems. They can create and feature or product they want and market it in any way other than tying it to Windows.
The free market has done a bang up job of protecting itself lately.
What free market?
. How exactly does a company get to 90% market share without any significant negative action against it?
Gaining a monopoly is not illegal or bad for the market by itself. You can simply make the best product and thus gain tons of market share. Should we punish companies for being successful in a market?
As I see it removing IE from windows at this point would do nothing but provide Microsoft with another revenue stream in the form of IE on cd for 10-20 bucks.
Then you disagree with a century of economics and pretty much all the experts. Fixing the market will take more than unbundling IE and Windows, but once accomplished can revitalize the Web browser market and innovation in Web technologies.
IE is still being used because people are familiar with it.
Partly yes, but a lot of people don't even know there are alternatives.
I've gone so far as removing IE manually (a difficult process that should change) and then come back later to see that users have downloaded IE "because it's easier".
Yeah, people don't like change and some legitimately benefit from using IE because they need to access sites that only work properly using it. Both are problems to be solved in fixing the market. I don't see them as arguments against fixing the market.
Note, you still haven't answered my questions from my last post. What are you proposing as an alternative to enforcing the current laws? Why do you think those laws are not helpful and why do you think MS is not governed by the same economic principals as past monopolists?
Assuming your[sic] saying windows is the monopolized market...
I am and so are the courts.
...then our original premise holds true all bundled software with windows is either illegal or not illegal.
Not really. Only products from separate, pre-existing markets at the time of the monopolization and bundling. So any feature or application MS had in Windows before there was a separate market for it is safe. Anything they added afterwards is illegal unless sold separately to OEMs.
...the fact that IE is popular has nothing to do with it afterall wmp is bundled with windows but it hasn't stopped itunes popularity.
Way to pick a special case. iTunes is bundled with and tied to iPods and has gained market share almost entirely because of that. The EU is still investigating if the iPod has enough influence to constitute a monopoly in its own right, but it is a close thing.
The fact is that sometimes the bundled piece is more popular than other options...
You're missing the point. This isn't about preventing popularity. This is about insuring competition so the best product in a market wins and so developers are motivated to innovate by greed. Sure browser developers can implement cool new technologies in their browser, but it doesn't help them gain market share because Web developers can't implement those technologies because they'd lose the 70% of people using IE. So making a Web browser better (everyone but IE supports SVG now, which is a significant improvement in quality and bandwidth) but that doesn't gain them any market share because IE is bundled and interoperability is broken. What motivation do browser developers have to innovate if it does not help them gain market share? Why should MS innovate if it does not lose them market share. These laws apply to all markets because historically this same thing happened. Monopolists bundled and innovation stalled and the industry suffered. See AT&T and the state of telephones as an example.
...does not mean it should be removed so long as it doesn't stop users from acquiring or using a competitive product.
No, it should be prevented from being bundled so if it is a better product it will be more popular and if it is a worse product it will be less popular and everyone will be motivated to improve by simple greed. That's how the free market works. Why are you opposed to letting the free market work using the same laws we've been using for a hundred years? Why are the laws that have saved our bacon over and over no longer good ones? Why do you think all the economists wrong on this one? Why should MS not only be an exception to these laws, but be allowed to break them rather than have them overturned before they break them? I just don't see any reason why this criminal behavior should be allowed either from an economics or legal perspective. What, exactly, are you proposing we change the laws to?
No, he's just asking for fairness.
The same laws apply to everyone and have been on the books for a hundred years. How is that not fair?
If MS can't bundle IE, then it's only fair to extend that to all the other apps they bundle (which presumably also give them an advantage over competitors).
It applies only to applications where there was a pre-existing, separate market before MS began bundling. That does include several applications MS bundles now, such as WMP which they have already been convicted with regard to.
And the same thing should also go for Ubuntu and Apple, both of which also bundle a specific browser and many apps with their OS's too.
The same laws do apply to Apple and Canonical, but not to OS X and Ubuntu since neither of those is a monopolized product. You can't tie a monopolized product and a product from a separate, pre-existing market. Everyone has to obey that law. Apple has come under investigation to see if their iPod constitutes monopoly influence on the portable, digital music player market and if the courts decide it does they will have to deal with their tying of iTunes, the iTunes store, and their DRM. It's the same law applied in the same way to everyone. You just have to know what the law is and preferably know why it was written.
The hypocrisy that surrounds this whole debate, and the level of anti-MS vitriol spewed forth anytime someone brings up the fact that they bundle what has become a basic app (a simple web browser) with their OS is absolutely ludicrous.
What's ludicrous is the apparent ignorance that surrounds this debate. I mean doesn't anybody think they should find out what antitrust law is before they come here and tell us why all the experts are wrong about it? What would you think of anyone who did not bother to find out about a subject before coming to you and asserting that the experts and you are wrong about it? I suspect at least some of the comments here are astroturf, but a lot are just ignorant people mislead by astroturfers or opinionated people too lazy to cure their own ignorance before forming an opinion.
...but no one in their right mind would release an OS anymore WITHOUT a web browser
Please. OS's are just one component of a computer system, along with CPUs, applications, monitors, and mice. Very few individuals buy components and assemble them on their own and all of those people are competent enough to install a browser. Would you argue it should be legal for MS to require OEMs to buy an MS brand CPU to go with every copy of Windows? After all, no one would ship a computer without a CPU and it is even more vital to using an OS than a Web browser.
Singling out MS and asking them to do that is unfair harassment.
MS singled themselves out by repeatedly breaking the laws everyone else goes out of their way to comply with. Claiming they are being singled out simply demonstrates you did not bother to learn about antitrust law enough to know why MS's actions are illegal and the actions of other companies are legal, something obvious to anyone who bothered to understand the purpose of antitrust law in the first place.
That is EXACTLY the counter to their argument. If bundling the browser is bad, ALL software bundles must be considered bad.
If firing a gun is bad in one case, then all cases of firing a gun must be bad. What, um, interesting logic you have there.
Well using your analogy then the browser must be the heart or head and the rest of the parts are the extremeties and non vital organs so yeah in this context all cases of firing the gun are bad.
Nope. In my analogy a firing a gun is bundling. Aiming a gun at a person is having a monopoly.
Bundling a monopolized market and an un-monopolized market undermines the second market, breaks capitalism, and is illegal. Bundling products from any other markets is legal. This isn't rocket science.
The vast majority of PCs sold are done so through vendors. Vendors already have the ability to "replace" IE (it still has to be there for compatibility reasons, but the user doesn't have to know, and all actions that will invoke a browser will invoke whatever the vendor wants). None do it.
Sure they can, but they have been given technological and market based reasons not to. Supporting two browsers can cost more. They have to make an effort to change the browser. Significant numbers of Web pages only work in IE. IE is pretty much impossible to completely remove from some versions of Windows.
All of the above are the result of MS's crime and all were intentional based upon internal communications revealed in previous cases. Antitrust abuse isn't about making it impossible to go with something else, it is about undermining the market so that when people or companies act in their own best interests they choose the inferior product. Sure, when AT&T was charging you thousands of dollars to rent a telephone you could go out and buy a different phone to use, but their rarity made them expensive and the fact that you still had to pay AT&T rent meant you were paying twice. Still you could do it, it just wasn't a good idea financially. That doesn't make it any less of a crime.
So how exactly would a plugin architecture help? You can already plug in an entire browser, and its very, very easy. And no one do it.
It would allow browser makers to completely remove IE and replace it with their own while making it necessary for developers of Web technologies incorporated in other products follow Web standards. It basically helps removes the illegal double support cost incentive and a small part of the illegal broken pages incentive.
Make a law that force OEMs to put another browser? Sure. As long as IE is still bundled if you buy a retail version of the OS. I don't want to have clean disks look like HP or Toshiba's restore disks.
That may or may not be part of the remedy, but it isn't going to be based on what is most convenient for you, but what will restore the market to proper innovation and competition and be fair to other browser makers and OEMs. If you are inconvenienced, well that sucks, but customers are often inconvenienced when the criminal actions of people they do business with catch up with those criminals. We don't let criminals out of jail to run their shops, despite the inconvenience to their customers.
That said, IE dominating has little to do with it being bundled.
I think that's complete bullshit, but there's an easy way to find out. If it won't hurt MS's market share, then we can just unbundle it right? No harm to MS no reason not to to it. Of course MS has fought tooth and nail to keep it bundled and their internal documents claim exactly the opposite of what you do and everything we know about economics runs counter to your belief.
IE was wiping the floor with all alternatives back then...
Irrelevant. It doesn't matter how they were doing then. It matters how they were doing at all times including today. Just because someone had a good product once does not mean it should hold the most market share today. The point of the free market and competition is to provide incentive to all parties to continually innovate and continually make the best product.
Compared to that, a perfectly ACID2/ACID3/W3C compliant browser with all other related standard technologies (like vector graphics) isn't that big of a step up from IE.
Which is part of the problem. Innovation is stifled by antitrust abuse so we have not moved forward very much in what should be one of the fastest evolving technology segments.
By then it was too late.
The point of a competitive free market is it is never too late. It is a constant process. That's why it works better t
microsoft bundling ie8 with win7 is exactly the same as macos including safari and ubuntu including firefox and kubuntu including konqueror and...
firing a rifle into a man's head is exactly the same firing a rifle at a deer while hunting or at a target in the olympic matches...
...provided you ignore the result of such action or laws making one illegal because of said results.
What you call "law" is also bound up with politics and corporate lobbying.
Antitrust laws have been on the books a hundred years now. They've been enforced against other companies for bundling as recently as a few months ago. The only lobbying has been MS paying off US politicians to let them off from the same crime there. The only politics has been the EU giving MS preferential treatment and bending over backwards to give them the benefit of the doubt to be diplomatic. Get a clue.
i think this is just bullshit. just because a product is highly successful, it has to lose features to maintain competition?
No, you just can't add features beyond that bundled with it, if there is already someone doing it. You can make and sell them in fair competition with everyone else, separate from your monopoly. MS bundled IE after they had a monopoly and after there were already people out there making money from browsers. Any normal company in any other industry would go out of their way to have the Web browser made by a different division and sold by a different sales guy to avoid any antitrust issues. MS instead decided to try to make it unremovable then donate lots of cash to politicians. That's about as crooked as you can get.
Lets be clear that we're not talking about a monopoly of a commodity, but rather the issue of bundling. Bundling a commodity with a monopoly is not an antitrust violation.
What! Bundling a commodity is a more clear antitrust violation, since it is clearly a separate, preexisting market. Do you have any understanding of antitrust law or are you just making this crap up?
And it's Microsoft's fault that the web is broken?
Ever hear of "embrace, extend, extinguish"? That was the plan revealed in the first court case where MS planned on breaking Web interoperability to prevent threats to their OS. Yeah, since they planned it and broke the law to make it happen I'd say that's there fault. How can you argue otherwise?
If MS were to disappear tomorrow would the web be a lot better?
Yes. Their bundling of IE is the one thing preventing me and many others from being able to implement newer standards supported by every other browser.
There is absolutely NO indication (and I mean none, zero, nada, zilch) that there is anyone out there innovating on the web who is held back due to MS.
Please, that's one of the main reasons for antitrust law. Bundling like this always stifles innovation because it removes the main motivation fo people to move forward, good old fashioned greed. I suppose there was no evidence that AT&T's monopoly was holding back the telephone handset market either. Just because nothing significantly changed for a decade in either high-tech market is no evidence huh? What a joke.
Give me one example of something that is a quantum breakthrough that might exist if MS had not existed or if they closed up shop tomorrow.
If IE were gone tomorrow, I'd start implementing SVG in Web pages the day after and make pages that load significantly faster while presenting images that scale better for both mobile devices and higher resolution displays.
The fact of the matter is that Firefox, Opera, and even IE are simply incremental improvements over Mosaic. You'd think that in the past 15 years at least ONE product would have done some huge innovation, even if it was shut down later.
First, your equivocation fails. IE is the only one that has refused to implement newer technologies. The one company with the most money somehow can't keep up with hobbyists? Yeah, I'm sure that's not intentional, especially in light of their internal memos saying it was.
Second, the point of antitrust law is to prevent markets from being undermined because when they are, there is little or no motivation for innovation. Claiming that current Web browsers are only incremental improvements is demonstrating the problem, not proving it does not exist. How many technologies would exist and be implemented today if developers did not have to cater to the 70% of the market still on IE? How much faster would the other browsers have advanced if such advancement was not made moot by IE?
In fact, one could argue that the biggest leap in innovation, Ajax, happened by MS.
Yeah, because of their illegal action they're the only one with the ability to push an innovation through genius. Everyone else has implemented lots of cool technologies, but Web developers can't use them because doing so ignores 70% of the market. THAT'S THE FRICKING PROBLEM!
The point is, a browser is now standard feature of an OS, just like an OS is more or less standard feature of a personal computer, an engine is to a car, cables come with electronic appliances, etc.
It is a component of a complete computer system, certainly, but there is no technical reason it has to be a feature of the OS. MS can architect a plug-in HTML engine and browser applications are already almost entirely separate in Vista. Just because MS has monopolized one component of a personal computer does not mean it should get a free pass for providing another and, in fact, doing so causes continuing harm to innovation and consumers.
Yes, back then, it was not so, Microsoft bundling IE hurt competition, and they should pay for that if the law thinks it did not pay enough already. Thats fine. But unbundling it in today's context is ridiculous, times changed.
How so? Bundling IE is still the number one thing holding back Web technologies and retarding innovation. It is continuing to cost Opera and other developers money. The problem is ongoing and I don't see how letting the abuse continue will help. If MS has to compete on a level playing field consumers win and the best browser producer wins. Thats competition in a free market? Letting the market remain undermined is the worst of all possible ideas. Its like extreme socialism except where they aren't even trying to act in the best interests of the people. It is uncompetitive and profiteering. How do you expect Web browsers to get better and new Web technologies to get better if a monopolist can foist their inferior product on people and has no motivation to continually improve it and significant financial motivation to keep it broken in certain ways?
You don't get to just define something as having a market because you try to sell it. Can I decide to sell a new type of SATA driver and claim there's now a SATA driver market?
no, you have to actually profit from it, not necessarily sell it. Then there's a market. That said, just because their is a market does not mean it is market that matters to antitrust abuse. Monopolists are only banned from bundling with pre-existing markets.
Can I try to sell a Windows taskbar replacement and them claim there's a taskbar market now?
Only if you actually sell it, but it doesn't matter because MS already has one bundled before you created the market.
You're like a neo-con - you keep arguing the same arguments, but essentially you're just megaphoning. None of your arguments hold water and many of them are outright preposterous.
Yeah, it's terrible when someone argues using the facts and you have none of your own, huh. Maybe you should try educating yourself before arguing your nonsense.
The idea of selling an operating system without a browser is simply untenable from both a technical and a marketing perspective.
People have already implemented other browsers and implemented the Windows APIs for an HTML engine. As for selling their OS, yeah that should be hard for Microsoft. I'm sure Dell and Sony and HP will all switch to Linux immediately. What a joke. And as if we should care. This is punishment for a crime genius.
The correct approach is that OEMs can install any other browser they want, and the end-user can install any other browser.
Which does not solve the problem at all. Hopefully the EU council is a lot brighter than you are.
Explain how Microsoft is a monopoly now. In the OS market, you have Linux, OSX, etc.
Legally monopoly influence is usually considered around 70%. Windows has a much larger share of installs than that on the desktop, but you also have to take into account the market share instead of install base. Since OEMs can't buy OS X, it is not considered part of the market. Apple bypasses the market and instead competes against OEMs in the computer system market. It makes it pretty obvious. Also both the US and EU courts have already ruled they do have monopoly influence, so it is no longer a question.
Bundling an essential application with an operating system is not an unfair practice.
In this case it is.
Should they get sued for including notepad too?
They aren't being sued, they're being prosecuted for breaking the law. And, yes, MS should stop bundling notepad and let OEMs pick what text editor to include on computers they ship. Then MS might be motivated to make notepad decent and properly handle unicode and line endings so OEMs would pick it.
If an OS can't include an internet browser, then what can it include?
Any software that did not have a pre-existing market before they had a monopoly and started bundling a competitor. Is it so terrible to expect MS to compete on even ground with other software makers for products other than their OS? Why do you hate free market competition? What are you, a commie :)
Umm, it's the EU "doing" the antitrust case. Opera reported the crime and Mozilla asked to have input as experts in the field.
Well... ok, but OEMs *could* already do that right now and they're choosing not to. What makes you think a lawsuit would change anything?
There are several reasons they don't and this criminal prosecution (this is NOT a lawsuit) was started to address them. Difficulties are removing IE, intentionally broken Web sites and services, and lack of motivation on the part of OEMs all of which are the result of the antitrust abuse. A proper remedy should address all these.
That is EXACTLY the counter to their argument. If bundling the browser is bad, ALL software bundles must be considered bad.
If firing a gun is bad in one case, then all cases of firing a gun must be bad. What, um, interesting logic you have there.
This is a lie. The web browser is a part of the operating system product.
From an economics perspective this is not the case. There is a separate market for Web browsers that do not come with the OS and that's what matters both legally and in terms of if the bundling undermines the free market.
And weren't the original complaints against Microsoft by the EU around the browser being tied to the OS?
No, the US case was, but the first EU case was with regard to bundling Windows Media Player and tying to Windows server. This is the first time the EU has addressed the browser issue. I think they were hoping the US would do something effective.
actually, the reason that my analogy sucked, is because you pay for the stereo. The browser is free...
Ha! Yeah and those two for one sales at the store, the second one really is free. IE developers are volunteers who don't get paid by the money you pay when you buy Windows, right. IE is just as free as the car stereo or any other component of your car.