There really isn't a lot to learn from the competing products; Microsoft only needs a bigger market share to be more competative in these areas, and If MS could copy what their competitors were doing (they can't in the case of google), they would.
Marketshare doesn't just instantly materialize out of thin air. The days when MS could just leverage Windows dominance and expect that consumers would buy whatever they provided are over. I think MS has a lot to learn from competing products. The emphasis on ease of use over multitudinous features is what differentiates both Apple and Google products from Microsoft products. MS has already dramatically restructured MSN Search in an effort to mimimic the simplicity of Google. They'll have a tougher time applying what they learn from the iPod, because MS relies on third party hardware vendors to create devices. Still, it seems they could lean on their partners more heavily, telling them, "Look, if you want to run Windows Media on your devices, you need to make them easier to use."
My feeling is that Microsoft could conceivably learn from its competition, but like Apple in the early 1990s, it has drunk too much of its own Kool-Aid. Ballmer and company don't want to hear that Apple's business model with iTunes/iPod (build the hardware and the software and the music store) or Google's approach (serve users first, and advertising revenue will follow) works better than Microsoft's tried and true "own the OS and leverage it relentlessly" business model. Hence, Ballmer would rather talk about brainwashing his kids. Whether his kids are old enough to use iPods is, in my opinion, beside the point. His comment betrays his stubborn refusal to acknowledge that MS has something to learn from the competition.
I did. Where does it say anything about email being a quick hack? I assume you're referring to this bit:
In the early 1970's, Ray Tomlinson was working on a small team developing the TENEX operating system, with local email programs called SNDMSG and READMAIL. In late 1971, Tomlinson developed the first ARPANET email application when he updated SNDMSG by adding a program called CPYNET capable of copying files over the network, and informed his colleagues by sending them an email using the new program with instructions on how to use it. To extend the addressing to the network, Tomlinson chose the "commercial at" symbol to combine the user and host names, providing the naturally meaningful notation "user@host" that is the standard for email addressing today.
First, nothing in this description tells me how long it took Tomlinson to come up with the idea and implement it. Second, Tomlinson's effort set up the addressing convention of email. That is hardly the whole of email as we know it today. As the article notes, SMTP didn't even come around until the early 1980s. My point is that it took a lot of work to create what we now know as email. Tomlinson built on SNDMSG, but that was neither the start nor the end of the process of developing email. To characterize its development as a "late night hack" seems insulting to all of the people who put their time and effort into that development.
Perhaps my interpretation of the original post was a bit oversensitive, but I just dislike such flippant characterizations, particularly when someone doesn't provide any factual information and suggests that I look up the information myself. If you know the history behind something, why not share it with the rest of us, instead of assuming we'll take your statement on faith?
I'd take the other approach - if they choose rival manufacturers then study first hand why they do so.
Knowing your enemy is certainly preferable to willful ignorance.
Imagine Ballmer as a military commander: "No, I'd rather not examine the captured enemy secret weapon. From now on, all captured equipment shall be ignored! Any soldiers who say anything about the superior capabilities of the enemy equipment shall be placed in one of the suicide squads. Carry on, men! Carry on!"
We damn Microsoft if they do, and damn them if they don't.
Actually, we damn Microsoft for their general attitude about standards bodies. The company has a deserved reputation for ignoring standards when it helps them, and subverting standards when they can't ignore them. Microsoft has engendered ill will through past behavior, and it takes more than an announcement that they are acting in good faith to get me to believe them.
QinetiQ sounds like the fusion of Qbert and Compaq. They ought to move out to Silicon Valley, so they can rub shoulders with the guys from qoop. Or perhaps New York would be better, given that pando makes their home there.
Your analysis of the three types of business makes sense to me. In the end, it's not a matter of if, but when people will update. They will already miss the holiday buying season this year, so that may slow first year adoption by consumers.
I guess time will tell. I think that if Vista's security features make a noticeable difference, and the new OS is as easier or easier to use than Vista, adoption will be pretty good across the board. If either of those two conditions are not met, however, I think they'll have a tougher time getting people to buy it. Also, Vista's hardware requirements may keep people from upgrading until they absolutely have to do so.
Claria will have nothing to sell when it comes out.
I wonder how long it will take for Vista to be adopted by the majority of the Windows-using population. According to this article, as of last year at this time, only 40% of corporate users were using Windows XP. It could be several years before Vista reaches the point where even half of the Windows market. According to this graph, about 15% of Windows users still aren't on XP. Of course, the data could be skewed. Still, it makes me think that spyware will be with at least some Windows users (perhaps the least technically-savvy, and therefore least equipped to deal with spyware) for a long time to come.
Vista is coming in 2007. Vista is going to have antispyware built directly into the operating system. By 2009, when XP is going to be a minority OS as people's crummy hardware dies
Your comment seems highly specualtive. Vista hasn't even been released yet. We have no idea whether the antispyware components built into the OS will actually work in real world usage. Plus, 2009 is three years down the road. Even if Vista was a spyware killer, that gives Claria at least three years to make money with their current business model.
People play games as much for the rules as for the worlds or the characters they create. Games are not just stories, they are systems. For example, even though the d20 System in the pencil and paper game world has been successful, there are still many other game systems. In business computing, figuring out new rules (how does this damned app work? Why is this OS different?) present annoyances. In the world of games, these challenges are part of the exploration and fun.
...those changes only will happen when they no longer have the advantages they do now.
Excellent point. The Windows/Office dominance is actually an albatross around their necks, in that it has allowed them to create this massive infrastructure to perpetuate the Windows/Office paradigm. They can't engage in creative destruction, because to do so would imperil their primary revenue stream.
Perhaps all those proposals we heard a few years back about splitting up MS really do make some sense. If MS voluntarily split itself into three or four different companies and made the Windows/Office component strictly a licensing arm, they could potentially turn their slide around. However, I find the probability of them splitting the company to be about equal to Ralph Nader being elected President.
When MS reaches the Pit of Dispair that IBM reached in the 1990s, we'll see them innovating. Either that, or they'll slide on for a decade or two before being gobbled up by 37signals.;-)
Apple's core competency seems to be design. Their hardware and software products in general are aesthetically pleasing, easy to operate, and fun to use.
Could it be that MS, in trying to be all things to all people, has lost sight of its core competency?
Is leveraging their Windows/Office hegemony Microsoft's true core competency? If not that, what? It used to be marketing, but that's not true any more. What is the core competency of a company that has been riding on the dominance of its desktop OS and office software for over a decade?
Google is, as has already been mentioned, a public company. It does have certain fiduciary responsibilities to its shareholders, so the management can't for example, decide to shut down operations, abscond with the profits, and move to the Bahamas.
Beyond that, though, any company still has to operate within the law. Just ask Microsoft, which is grappling with EU law and has fought the US Justice Department and various US states over the years. Virtually any large company you can think of has been sued for running afoul of the law in some fashion, and will get sued again in the future.
Apple has been successfully sued over bad batteries. Yahoo was sued in France for allowing Nazi content. I'm sure we're all familiar with Tyco, Enron, and Worldcom.
Personally I think this suit against Google doesn't have much of a chance, because Google's behavior doesn't seem at all abusive or discriminatory. Frankly, I'd be suprised if it survives Google's summary judgment motion (which will surely be forthcoming).
That said, companies can't do whatever they want, even with data they have gathered on their own. They still have to live within the same laws as the rest of us. Ayn Rand wouldn't have liked it, but that's the way it is.
if you check out netcraft, Microsoft products seem to place a far third behind commercial Unixes and Linux.
I'm not sure Netcraft tells the whole story. After all, Netcraft surveys webservers. Whether that is a true reflection of Microsoft's share of the overall business server market is debatable at best.
That said, I agree with your assertion that Microsoft has failed to effectively leverage its desktop dominance in the server market. Throwing money at it and making big announcements doesn't mean squat. Deliver the goods and people will believe you, MS. Until then, it's just hot air.
As Microsoft acknowledges on the Mix '06 Web site, "reduced need to hack around quirks in older browsers, however, means that existing pages written specifically for older browsers may render differently in IE7. In addition, IE7 includes a number of new security features which may have impact on binary extensions such as toolbars, browser helper objects, and ActiveX controls."
Meaning, those of you who were shortsighted enough to code to IE 6 will now have to retrofit your sites to make them IE 7 compliant. When IE 8 comes out, you'll then have to retrofit your site again....
Can you see why Web standards might be meaningful? Sure, it doesn't really matter to the web coder who gets the extra dough for doing such cleanup work, but I can imagine after a while big companies that spend a lot of money on web development might sit up, take notice, and push for standards-compliant browsers. Then again, they've been letting MS slide for years, so I'm not holding my breath.
Who comes up with these obnoxious, self-important business terms?
Google is unleashing a long tail, soup-to-nuts integrated solution that satisfies pent-up demand and synergizes efficiencies. It's a slam-dunk no-brainer!
The reality is that soldiers Don't have Ethics, otherwise, they wouldn't be soldiers of the USA (We all know what kind of polices the US Army has, if you decide to participate in it, you are a just like them, and there is no excuse you can use to argue with that).
So did the soldiers of the USA who fought in World War II have ethics? What about the soldiers of the USA who fought in Korea? World War I? The US Civil War? Desert Storm?
Or is it just that the soldiers of the USA who are involved in conflicts you don't support are without ethics? If soldiers are instruments of the state, shouldn't you be directing your ire at the elected government (and by extension the electorate) that ordered the soldiers and Marines to fight in Iraq? What if after the invasion of Iraq, the US had actually excecuted a smart policy, kept the Iraqi Army intact, quickly rehabilitated the Iraqi infrastructure, and then left? Would those same soldiers and Marines still have been without ethics?
Does a soldier sitting in a National Guard base in Oregon have ethics? Does a soldier evacuating refugees have ethics? What about a soldier who guards food relief caravans? Are all soldiers the same in their ethics? Is a scumbag MP who beat defenseless prisoners the same as a Special Forces soldier who hauls Saddam out of a hole in the ground, so he can face trial?
...if you want a high quality system and support, you should go to a PC shop or a friend.
I'd add the caveat that you need to go to a PC shop you know and trust, or to a friend whom you know is capable and always available. Both of these approaches carry their own risks. The one or two people at the PC shop who really know their stuff may move away or take another job. The friend who put together your PC may grow to resent your tech support calls, straining your friendship.
I'm only a casual gamer, (which is why I don't own a Windows machine), but my experience with mom-and-pop outfits over the years has been variable. My experience with Apple Stores, on the other hand, has been uniformly excellent. My point isn't that Apple Stores are the cat's meow in terms of service, but that a large organization can provide quality support if they know what they're doing. It seems to me that if Dell's support is not as good as it should be, it's not necessarily because of Dell's size, but because of how their support is structured and operated.
For those that say Cisco is incapable of speaking to the home user market on the home user level, I have one word for you. Linksys.
Having the technology pieces in place is less than half the battle. The reason people are skeptical about Cisco's ability to deliver on this promise has to do with Cisco's roots and core focus. It's very difficult to turn a large company that made its fortune selling routers to Fortune 500 comapnies into a company that can successfully package and market its vision for the living room.
Cisco may be able to pull it off. Keep in mind, however, that cable companies are having a tough time getting consumers to buy into their digital convergence schemes, even though they're already in everyone's living rooms. It's not unreasonable to be skeptical about Cisco's claims.
Earlier this week suggestions that Apple needs a Security Czar, now that Google needs a CMO.
You beat me to the punch. I saw this article and thought, "What, is it Backseat Driver Week at BW?" Since you're looking for a job, maybe you could head up their Redundancy Detection Department. Apparently they need one.
Don't you think that if Microsoft wants to do business in the European Union, it should do so by the laws of the EU? If Airbus, for example, was found to be violating US law, I would imagine the courts of the United States would demand compliance with the legal remedy.
Sure, in theory, government shouldn't meddle in the affairs of businesses. Unfortunately, businesses from time to time run afoul of laws. International businesses could surely forgo profits (and the hassle of dealing with governments they find intrusive) by chosing not to do business in certain markets. Since Microsoft has chosen to stay in the EU market, it seems they feel they can still make plenty of profit in Europe despite these government entanglements.
Freedom of choice. You chose to do business in the EU. Concurrently, you agree to comply with its laws.
This is about more than ensuring a competitive landscape. It's about making sure that Microsoft is not above the law. Regardless of whether you think the EU's initial decision was correct or incorrect, Microsoft is bound by the decision since it does business in the EU. Should any individual or business be allowed to simply disregard a verdict it feels is unfair? I don't want any individual to operate above the law, and I certainly don't feel comfortable when a multibillion-dollar company thinks it can flout the law, regardless of the jurisdiction.
Slashdot Mirror
ask.com has no operations there.
At the same meeting Diller announced that Ask will begin operating in China next year... (Sept 22, 2005)
There really isn't a lot to learn from the competing products; Microsoft only needs a bigger market share to be more competative in these areas, and If MS could copy what their competitors were doing (they can't in the case of google), they would.
Marketshare doesn't just instantly materialize out of thin air. The days when MS could just leverage Windows dominance and expect that consumers would buy whatever they provided are over. I think MS has a lot to learn from competing products. The emphasis on ease of use over multitudinous features is what differentiates both Apple and Google products from Microsoft products. MS has already dramatically restructured MSN Search in an effort to mimimic the simplicity of Google. They'll have a tougher time applying what they learn from the iPod, because MS relies on third party hardware vendors to create devices. Still, it seems they could lean on their partners more heavily, telling them, "Look, if you want to run Windows Media on your devices, you need to make them easier to use."
My feeling is that Microsoft could conceivably learn from its competition, but like Apple in the early 1990s, it has drunk too much of its own Kool-Aid. Ballmer and company don't want to hear that Apple's business model with iTunes/iPod (build the hardware and the software and the music store) or Google's approach (serve users first, and advertising revenue will follow) works better than Microsoft's tried and true "own the OS and leverage it relentlessly" business model. Hence, Ballmer would rather talk about brainwashing his kids. Whether his kids are old enough to use iPods is, in my opinion, beside the point. His comment betrays his stubborn refusal to acknowledge that MS has something to learn from the competition.
Maybe you should read it.
I did. Where does it say anything about email being a quick hack? I assume you're referring to this bit:
First, nothing in this description tells me how long it took Tomlinson to come up with the idea and implement it. Second, Tomlinson's effort set up the addressing convention of email. That is hardly the whole of email as we know it today. As the article notes, SMTP didn't even come around until the early 1980s. My point is that it took a lot of work to create what we now know as email. Tomlinson built on SNDMSG, but that was neither the start nor the end of the process of developing email. To characterize its development as a "late night hack" seems insulting to all of the people who put their time and effort into that development.
Perhaps my interpretation of the original post was a bit oversensitive, but I just dislike such flippant characterizations, particularly when someone doesn't provide any factual information and suggests that I look up the information myself. If you know the history behind something, why not share it with the rest of us, instead of assuming we'll take your statement on faith?
I'd take the other approach - if they choose rival manufacturers then study first hand why they do so.
Knowing your enemy is certainly preferable to willful ignorance.
Imagine Ballmer as a military commander: "No, I'd rather not examine the captured enemy secret weapon. From now on, all captured equipment shall be ignored! Any soldiers who say anything about the superior capabilities of the enemy equipment shall be placed in one of the suicide squads. Carry on, men! Carry on!"
look it up if you don't believe me.
You insinuate that hardly any work at all went into the creation of email. This says otherwise.
We damn Microsoft if they do, and damn them if they don't.
Actually, we damn Microsoft for their general attitude about standards bodies. The company has a deserved reputation for ignoring standards when it helps them, and subverting standards when they can't ignore them. Microsoft has engendered ill will through past behavior, and it takes more than an announcement that they are acting in good faith to get me to believe them.
Actions speak louder than words.
That made me laugh out loud.
Hey, maybe you should write the next LOTR musical. No doubt you'd do better than these bozos did.
The latest incarnation of The Lord of the Rings is here in the form of musical theater...
Stop! That's all you needed to say. Crappiness is guaranteed any time you inject the words "musical theater" into a sentence.
in concocting goofy company names.
QinetiQ sounds like the fusion of Qbert and Compaq. They ought to move out to Silicon Valley, so they can rub shoulders with the guys from qoop. Or perhaps New York would be better, given that pando makes their home there.
Those figures actually help Vista more than not.
Your analysis of the three types of business makes sense to me. In the end, it's not a matter of if, but when people will update. They will already miss the holiday buying season this year, so that may slow first year adoption by consumers.
I guess time will tell. I think that if Vista's security features make a noticeable difference, and the new OS is as easier or easier to use than Vista, adoption will be pretty good across the board. If either of those two conditions are not met, however, I think they'll have a tougher time getting people to buy it. Also, Vista's hardware requirements may keep people from upgrading until they absolutely have to do so.
Claria will have nothing to sell when it comes out.
I wonder how long it will take for Vista to be adopted by the majority of the Windows-using population. According to this article, as of last year at this time, only 40% of corporate users were using Windows XP. It could be several years before Vista reaches the point where even half of the Windows market. According to this graph, about 15% of Windows users still aren't on XP. Of course, the data could be skewed. Still, it makes me think that spyware will be with at least some Windows users (perhaps the least technically-savvy, and therefore least equipped to deal with spyware) for a long time to come.
Vista is coming in 2007. Vista is going to have antispyware built directly into the operating system. By 2009, when XP is going to be a minority OS as people's crummy hardware dies
Your comment seems highly specualtive. Vista hasn't even been released yet. We have no idea whether the antispyware components built into the OS will actually work in real world usage. Plus, 2009 is three years down the road. Even if Vista was a spyware killer, that gives Claria at least three years to make money with their current business model.
People play games as much for the rules as for the worlds or the characters they create. Games are not just stories, they are systems. For example, even though the d20 System in the pencil and paper game world has been successful, there are still many other game systems. In business computing, figuring out new rules (how does this damned app work? Why is this OS different?) present annoyances. In the world of games, these challenges are part of the exploration and fun.
Excellent point. The Windows/Office dominance is actually an albatross around their necks, in that it has allowed them to create this massive infrastructure to perpetuate the Windows/Office paradigm. They can't engage in creative destruction, because to do so would imperil their primary revenue stream.
Perhaps all those proposals we heard a few years back about splitting up MS really do make some sense. If MS voluntarily split itself into three or four different companies and made the Windows/Office component strictly a licensing arm, they could potentially turn their slide around. However, I find the probability of them splitting the company to be about equal to Ralph Nader being elected President.
When MS reaches the Pit of Dispair that IBM reached in the 1990s, we'll see them innovating. Either that, or they'll slide on for a decade or two before being gobbled up by 37signals. ;-)
Apple's core competency seems to be design. Their hardware and software products in general are aesthetically pleasing, easy to operate, and fun to use.
Could it be that MS, in trying to be all things to all people, has lost sight of its core competency?
Is leveraging their Windows/Office hegemony Microsoft's true core competency? If not that, what? It used to be marketing, but that's not true any more. What is the core competency of a company that has been riding on the dominance of its desktop OS and office software for over a decade?
Google is, as has already been mentioned, a public company. It does have certain fiduciary responsibilities to its shareholders, so the management can't for example, decide to shut down operations, abscond with the profits, and move to the Bahamas.
Beyond that, though, any company still has to operate within the law. Just ask Microsoft, which is grappling with EU law and has fought the US Justice Department and various US states over the years. Virtually any large company you can think of has been sued for running afoul of the law in some fashion, and will get sued again in the future.
Apple has been successfully sued over bad batteries. Yahoo was sued in France for allowing Nazi content. I'm sure we're all familiar with Tyco, Enron, and Worldcom.
Personally I think this suit against Google doesn't have much of a chance, because Google's behavior doesn't seem at all abusive or discriminatory. Frankly, I'd be suprised if it survives Google's summary judgment motion (which will surely be forthcoming).
That said, companies can't do whatever they want, even with data they have gathered on their own. They still have to live within the same laws as the rest of us. Ayn Rand wouldn't have liked it, but that's the way it is.
if you check out netcraft, Microsoft products seem to place a far third behind commercial Unixes and Linux.
I'm not sure Netcraft tells the whole story. After all, Netcraft surveys webservers. Whether that is a true reflection of Microsoft's share of the overall business server market is debatable at best.
That said, I agree with your assertion that Microsoft has failed to effectively leverage its desktop dominance in the server market. Throwing money at it and making big announcements doesn't mean squat. Deliver the goods and people will believe you, MS. Until then, it's just hot air.
From TFA:
As Microsoft acknowledges on the Mix '06 Web site, "reduced need to hack around quirks in older browsers, however, means that existing pages written specifically for older browsers may render differently in IE7. In addition, IE7 includes a number of new security features which may have impact on binary extensions such as toolbars, browser helper objects, and ActiveX controls."
Meaning, those of you who were shortsighted enough to code to IE 6 will now have to retrofit your sites to make them IE 7 compliant. When IE 8 comes out, you'll then have to retrofit your site again... .
Can you see why Web standards might be meaningful? Sure, it doesn't really matter to the web coder who gets the extra dough for doing such cleanup work, but I can imagine after a while big companies that spend a lot of money on web development might sit up, take notice, and push for standards-compliant browsers. Then again, they've been letting MS slide for years, so I'm not holding my breath.
Who comes up with these obnoxious, self-important business terms?
Google is unleashing a long tail, soup-to-nuts integrated solution that satisfies pent-up demand and synergizes efficiencies. It's a slam-dunk no-brainer!
The reality is that soldiers Don't have Ethics, otherwise, they wouldn't be soldiers of the USA (We all know what kind of polices the US Army has, if you decide to participate in it, you are a just like them, and there is no excuse you can use to argue with that).
So did the soldiers of the USA who fought in World War II have ethics? What about the soldiers of the USA who fought in Korea? World War I? The US Civil War? Desert Storm?
Or is it just that the soldiers of the USA who are involved in conflicts you don't support are without ethics? If soldiers are instruments of the state, shouldn't you be directing your ire at the elected government (and by extension the electorate) that ordered the soldiers and Marines to fight in Iraq? What if after the invasion of Iraq, the US had actually excecuted a smart policy, kept the Iraqi Army intact, quickly rehabilitated the Iraqi infrastructure, and then left? Would those same soldiers and Marines still have been without ethics?
Does a soldier sitting in a National Guard base in Oregon have ethics? Does a soldier evacuating refugees have ethics? What about a soldier who guards food relief caravans? Are all soldiers the same in their ethics? Is a scumbag MP who beat defenseless prisoners the same as a Special Forces soldier who hauls Saddam out of a hole in the ground, so he can face trial?
Your brush is far too broad.
I'd add the caveat that you need to go to a PC shop you know and trust, or to a friend whom you know is capable and always available. Both of these approaches carry their own risks. The one or two people at the PC shop who really know their stuff may move away or take another job. The friend who put together your PC may grow to resent your tech support calls, straining your friendship.
I'm only a casual gamer, (which is why I don't own a Windows machine), but my experience with mom-and-pop outfits over the years has been variable. My experience with Apple Stores, on the other hand, has been uniformly excellent. My point isn't that Apple Stores are the cat's meow in terms of service, but that a large organization can provide quality support if they know what they're doing. It seems to me that if Dell's support is not as good as it should be, it's not necessarily because of Dell's size, but because of how their support is structured and operated.
I play videogames. I vote.
That scares the hell out of me, too. I mean, what kind of bubble do you live in that makes video games the focal point of your political activity?
For those that say Cisco is incapable of speaking to the home user market on the home user level, I have one word for you. Linksys.
Having the technology pieces in place is less than half the battle. The reason people are skeptical about Cisco's ability to deliver on this promise has to do with Cisco's roots and core focus. It's very difficult to turn a large company that made its fortune selling routers to Fortune 500 comapnies into a company that can successfully package and market its vision for the living room.
Cisco may be able to pull it off. Keep in mind, however, that cable companies are having a tough time getting consumers to buy into their digital convergence schemes, even though they're already in everyone's living rooms. It's not unreasonable to be skeptical about Cisco's claims.
Earlier this week suggestions that Apple needs a Security Czar, now that Google needs a CMO.
You beat me to the punch. I saw this article and thought, "What, is it Backseat Driver Week at BW?" Since you're looking for a job, maybe you could head up their Redundancy Detection Department. Apparently they need one.
No, it's still extortion.
Don't you think that if Microsoft wants to do business in the European Union, it should do so by the laws of the EU? If Airbus, for example, was found to be violating US law, I would imagine the courts of the United States would demand compliance with the legal remedy.
Sure, in theory, government shouldn't meddle in the affairs of businesses. Unfortunately, businesses from time to time run afoul of laws. International businesses could surely forgo profits (and the hassle of dealing with governments they find intrusive) by chosing not to do business in certain markets. Since Microsoft has chosen to stay in the EU market, it seems they feel they can still make plenty of profit in Europe despite these government entanglements.
Freedom of choice. You chose to do business in the EU. Concurrently, you agree to comply with its laws.
This is about more than ensuring a competitive landscape. It's about making sure that Microsoft is not above the law. Regardless of whether you think the EU's initial decision was correct or incorrect, Microsoft is bound by the decision since it does business in the EU. Should any individual or business be allowed to simply disregard a verdict it feels is unfair? I don't want any individual to operate above the law, and I certainly don't feel comfortable when a multibillion-dollar company thinks it can flout the law, regardless of the jurisdiction.