Did the antitrust trial mean nothing? I thought they were supposed to separate these things...
From Cnet.
*edit* Link fixed.... I could have sworn I clicked on it to check it...
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It looks like Mircosoft can do whatever they want...
- Thread starter Indolent
- Start date
Did the antitrust trial mean nothing? I thought they were supposed to separate these things...
From Cnet.
*edit* Link fixed.... I could have sworn I clicked on it to check it...
I think I read something the other day that an appeals(?) judge feels the antitrust judgement doesn't go far enough in punishing (stopping) MS and it may change the order.
Excuse me if some of my facts are messed up but I just browsed through the article and don't remember much of it 😉
There is no point to lawsuits like that.
The only thing you can realy do would be to divide MS up, but that would be pointless since it would destroy the company and put it out of business, since MS is only able to sustain itself thru it's size. No judge is going to purposely sacrifice the jobs of thousands of people, ruin the retirment funds of all the investors, and ruin MS's investments in many many other companies.
The only other choice is to create special rules just for MS. Which is silly.
I say let MS be all the MS it can be. Lock-in sucks and makes products less usefull and more expensive. Once MS does something bad and it is provable in a court of law, then nail them to the wall.
All this latest stuff is doing is keeping MS "in check". Meaning that it is still acceptable for most people to use and gives other companies hope that when they do business with MS they aren't signing their own deathwarrents down the line 2-5 years from now when MS replicates their technology and puts them out of business.
Once companies realise that the majority of their documents, skills, and information will become instantly inaccesable and useless if MS went down it will give them second thoughts. It's already happening.
This stuff is helping them as much as it hurts them. "See? MS can play nice now, too! Cause the judge says so."
The only thing you can realy do would be to divide MS up, but that would be pointless since it would destroy the company and put it out of business, since MS is only able to sustain itself thru it's size. No judge is going to purposely sacrifice the jobs of thousands of people, ruin the retirment funds of all the investors, and ruin MS's investments in many many other companies.
The only other choice is to create special rules just for MS. Which is silly.
I say let MS be all the MS it can be. Lock-in sucks and makes products less usefull and more expensive. Once MS does something bad and it is provable in a court of law, then nail them to the wall.
All this latest stuff is doing is keeping MS "in check". Meaning that it is still acceptable for most people to use and gives other companies hope that when they do business with MS they aren't signing their own deathwarrents down the line 2-5 years from now when MS replicates their technology and puts them out of business.
Once companies realise that the majority of their documents, skills, and information will become instantly inaccesable and useless if MS went down it will give them second thoughts. It's already happening.
This stuff is helping them as much as it hurts them. "See? MS can play nice now, too! Cause the judge says so."
I don't think this is entirely true. I think if you broke Microsoft up per the original idea (a seperate OS and Office/applications company) you would now have 2 monolithic and huge companies. Microsoft as it is right now has nearly (or above) $50 billion. A split in two would give you two companies/divisions with $25 billion. In cash! I also feel that other companies should just leave MS alone. If they (other companies) were in Microsoft's position, they would not be complaining (I find it ammusing that AOL for example, has the nerve to be involved in any anti-trust lawsuit against any one else...) This is not to say MS is blameless or angelic by any stretch. I am just of the overall opinion that there are too many people that can sue for too many stupid (ie whatever they want) reasons.
\Dan
Barnaby W. Füi
Elite Member
Supposedly they're also developing something to displace Flash. It sure seems like the antitrust suit didn't change anything. Pretty fvcked up. :disgust:
As I said in that relevant post, when Microsoft "stiffles" competition it's a bad thing. When Microsoft tries to compete it's also a bad thing. I think people need to relax. I understand though. I know it's popular and all the "cool" people want Microsoft to disappear.
\Dan
Barnaby W. Füi
Elite Member
Originally posted by: EeyoreX
As I said in that relevant post, when Microsoft "stiffles" competition it's a bad thing. When Microsoft tries to compete it's also a bad thing. I think people need to relax. I understand though. I know it's popular and all the "cool" people want Microsoft to disappear.
\Dan
Because they only compete for a short time. After they take out the competition, they will stifle. It's all happened before.
Yes, MS has a history of doing pretty bad things when it comes to competition.
For instance PC vendors that would not ship windows exclusively pre-installed would get there shipments of new windows OS later and at a higher price then their compiting vendors that would play along. THis was one of the charges against them in the court cases.
Also there have been several notable cases of MS courting companies that have technology that they would like to incorporate into their software. They promise contracts, joint partnerships or offering other incentives and then when the company thought that they had the contracts and money for certian MS would ask to examine the software specs and how it works a bit closer. Once they send the important information MS would break communication and eventually release a competing product that does the exactly same thing. Thus driving the smaller software companies out of business before they could use the court system to defend themselves.
This has shown out in a couple nasty little lawsuites successfully filled by the remaining owners of now defunct software companies.
NOW granted this is in the past and lots of times it get overblown and people try to paint MS all evil. And this is a disservice.
After all MS isn't the only people that worked like that, IBM tried several underhanded tactics itself in a attempt to drive PC-clone manufacturers out of business for example. Novell (edit: oops actually the BSD lawsuits happened long before Novell got involved in Unix, but I am sure that they've done other underhanded things) and other Unix vendors tried to sue BSD out of existance after using the programmers of that OS to create things like TCP/IP and help make Unix a viable OS(not to mentain that BSD help trained many programmers that were used in commercial software). It is their fault by their pig-headedness that MS now dominates the Desktop market. And now these people are considured "big friends" of Linux.
For the most part 90% of MS is probably made up of dedicated individuals that actually want to make good software. Unfortuanatly (or fortunately depending on your view point) the design and implimentation of windows and other MS software is fundamentally flawed (IMO).
You can't replace what happened in the past, and unlike IBM, Novell and others they have yet to pay for their mistakes.
As far as MS being worth 50 billion dollars, their position is quite a bit more shaky then they would like to see.
MS has a VERY limited scope in profitable products. In fact it's limited to only 2 products: Windows and Office. Everything they do is designed specificly to keep people buying those products.
Tech support, DirectX, IE, MS word formats, their databases, etc etc everything is geared towards this aim.
The other big hunk of the income of MS comes from the stock market. Due to MS's reputation as the undefeatable monolith they are viewed as a safe investment. People line up to hand them money because they trust that MS would be around 20-30 years from now and still be profitable.
The then in turn re-invest this money in other technology. Such as buying 1/3 of Apple. (notice that they sold many copies of MS Office suite to Apple users, and stopped developement of any competing Apple office products) They have millions, probably billions of dollars invested in various parts of the US economy. A very large percent of it's income comes from these investments.
MS is only able to dominate because there shear size means that they can sell Windows and Office at rock-bottom prices and cut many corners in the developement and people will still buy it. If you devided it up then that would destroy MS's numarical advantage, destroy it's image as a safe investment and ruin it's chances to reinvest in other companies to make money.
Once MS starts to fall they will go into a downward spiral for a LONG time. don't think they would go out of business completely though.
Now this is all just speculation on my part, and I am doubtless very wrong on several points, but I think I would score a C+ in any test on MS economic theory. 😛 If you want referances I can even supply them. ALso correct me if you have some info I lack This sort of thing is very interesting to me.
For instance PC vendors that would not ship windows exclusively pre-installed would get there shipments of new windows OS later and at a higher price then their compiting vendors that would play along. THis was one of the charges against them in the court cases.
Also there have been several notable cases of MS courting companies that have technology that they would like to incorporate into their software. They promise contracts, joint partnerships or offering other incentives and then when the company thought that they had the contracts and money for certian MS would ask to examine the software specs and how it works a bit closer. Once they send the important information MS would break communication and eventually release a competing product that does the exactly same thing. Thus driving the smaller software companies out of business before they could use the court system to defend themselves.
This has shown out in a couple nasty little lawsuites successfully filled by the remaining owners of now defunct software companies.
NOW granted this is in the past and lots of times it get overblown and people try to paint MS all evil. And this is a disservice.
After all MS isn't the only people that worked like that, IBM tried several underhanded tactics itself in a attempt to drive PC-clone manufacturers out of business for example. Novell (edit: oops actually the BSD lawsuits happened long before Novell got involved in Unix, but I am sure that they've done other underhanded things) and other Unix vendors tried to sue BSD out of existance after using the programmers of that OS to create things like TCP/IP and help make Unix a viable OS(not to mentain that BSD help trained many programmers that were used in commercial software). It is their fault by their pig-headedness that MS now dominates the Desktop market. And now these people are considured "big friends" of Linux.
For the most part 90% of MS is probably made up of dedicated individuals that actually want to make good software. Unfortuanatly (or fortunately depending on your view point) the design and implimentation of windows and other MS software is fundamentally flawed (IMO).
You can't replace what happened in the past, and unlike IBM, Novell and others they have yet to pay for their mistakes.
As far as MS being worth 50 billion dollars, their position is quite a bit more shaky then they would like to see.
MS has a VERY limited scope in profitable products. In fact it's limited to only 2 products: Windows and Office. Everything they do is designed specificly to keep people buying those products.
Tech support, DirectX, IE, MS word formats, their databases, etc etc everything is geared towards this aim.
The other big hunk of the income of MS comes from the stock market. Due to MS's reputation as the undefeatable monolith they are viewed as a safe investment. People line up to hand them money because they trust that MS would be around 20-30 years from now and still be profitable.
The then in turn re-invest this money in other technology. Such as buying 1/3 of Apple. (notice that they sold many copies of MS Office suite to Apple users, and stopped developement of any competing Apple office products) They have millions, probably billions of dollars invested in various parts of the US economy. A very large percent of it's income comes from these investments.
MS is only able to dominate because there shear size means that they can sell Windows and Office at rock-bottom prices and cut many corners in the developement and people will still buy it. If you devided it up then that would destroy MS's numarical advantage, destroy it's image as a safe investment and ruin it's chances to reinvest in other companies to make money.
Once MS starts to fall they will go into a downward spiral for a LONG time. don't think they would go out of business completely though.
Now this is all just speculation on my part, and I am doubtless very wrong on several points, but I think I would score a C+ in any test on MS economic theory. 😛 If you want referances I can even supply them. ALso correct me if you have some info I lack This sort of thing is very interesting to me.
fluxquantum
Platinum Member
that sucks
Originally posted by: EeyoreX
As I said in that relevant post, when Microsoft "stiffles" competition it's a bad thing. When Microsoft tries to compete it's also a bad thing. I think people need to relax. I understand though. I know it's popular and all the "cool" people want Microsoft to disappear.
\Dan
Some of us couldn't care less, unless it affects our ability to use what we want.
Fortunately or unfortunately, to compete with MS, first people would have to produce a product about as good and sell it for far less. People don't start with that, so they are never going anywhere. Then they would have to contend with the fact that people prefer to use what everybody else uses, so they can have maximum interchangability, and easily available, cheap peer support. If you say MS in front of whatever, everyone instantly knows what you are talking about.
>After they take out the competition, they will stifle.
What competition that they took out did you have in mind?
I can understand that people would like to see a name on a product other than MS. I would too. But I also don't see the point in maintaining competition if it means making the price higher. Face it, MS undercut the price of everyone else's OS to get in the position they are now, and they still do in a realistic sense. Even when linux is free, Window easily represents a better value for almost all users. Adjusting for inflation, XP Home is probably cheaper than Windows 3.0 was, so MS has not driven out the competition, and then raised prices, the way people picture a monopoly.
Let's say the govenment forced MS to charge $1000 for XP Home. Then we might possibly see some serious competition from others. Or maybe it would take $2000. Or maybe $3000. Whatever it takes to get serious competition. Is that what the government should do? After all, competition is good, isn't it?
I'm all for real competition. I am against government arranged fictitious competition.
People seem to think anti-trust law means you can't make anything else once you become dominant in one area. Not so. As long as all you are doing is using the huge capital accrued in one field to develop a product in another, there is no law against it. Should there be? If so, why?
MS, I think, does use underhanded sales tactics with OEMs. So do a lot of companies, whenever they can pull it off. I once saw a TV program about a new company trying to get a new soft drink on the shelves of supermarkets. It was good product, and cheap. They couldn't get super markets to put in on the shelves, because Pepsi and Coke pay the supermarkets outright for the shelf space. It's not illegal. But once you are declared a monopoly, like MS was, although not before, a marketing tactic might become illegal. The govenment then said that MS bundling their browser with their OS was illegally using their OS monopoly to further gain another monopoly with the browser. If the browser and OS were inseparable, there would not be a case, because they would have only been a single product.
And be realistic; the Internet browser is a part of the OS nowadays. The Internet is what the OS is all about for 90% of home computer sales. Using the Internet is as much a part of operating a computer as using a sound or video card, a scanner or printer, or even a hard disk. When I got my first few computers, the cost of a HD was beyond home users. People used 8" floppy drives ($400) holding about 250K for storage. What if the government had decided that operating a HD was not part of the OS, and MS had to unbundle HD operation from the OS? Fortunately, MS was so small the government wouldn't have noticed them when HDs started to be used in home computers. In those days, IBM owned the home computer market (really the small business computer market), and IBM considered that segment of their sales barely worth the trouble.
The story about Billion Gates and the Internet is that for a long time all those smart people Gates surrounds himself with tried in vain to get Gates to take a look at the Internet. Gates could not see the point. The smart guys didn't want to reorient MS, they just thought Gates ought to see what was happening for himself. Then Gates was pursuaded to devote a weekend to the Internet. Immediately afterwards, Gates decided to devote every resource possible at MS to making Windows the Internet OS. It wasn't long before Windows users were being informed regularly that yet another version of IE could be downloaded. Why? Was Gates suddenly tormented with nightmares that some other company might sell more Internet browsers than MS? No. Gates considers himself a visionary. With what he saw that weekend, he could envision the possibilty that some other OS that dealt with the Internet phenomenon better could beat out his OS. He was not interested in crushing Internet browser companies. Gates was making sure no competitor to Windows could arise, and he would do that by Windows becoming the Internet OS before that could possibly happen. If you read anything about Gates, you know that's how he thinks. Gates was not trying to get a monopoly in the Internet browser market, like the government case turned on, although that was the net result. He was insuring the dominance of Windows. You can imagine the cold sweat Gates was in when the government tried to get him to unbundle IE.
Gates does not think his OS has been completed. One day it is supposed to be the gateway to "The Information Highway." 3D environmental surround events transmitted into your home using some MS OS. Any information or media any place in the world instantly available. Real time telescope pictures from satellites throughout the solar system.
I do have a certain animosity toward MS, mainly because I have to cope with the shortcomings of their OS, even while it is by far the most sensible choice available. But let's have some perspective and realism. MS has been fair to the point of benevolence in comparison to pratically any other software company. Even MS's underhanded marketing tactics look cudly and cute next to what goes on in other businesses, like groceries, movies, TV, or music. MS's primary offence, which people find so unforgivable, is that they are successful. People may think William Gates is too powerful, but just think what the computer world would be like if instead a totalitarian megalomaniac like Steve Jobs had the position that Gates does, and be greatful.
>After they take out the competition, they will stifle.
What competition that they took out did you have in mind?
I can understand that people would like to see a name on a product other than MS. I would too. But I also don't see the point in maintaining competition if it means making the price higher. Face it, MS undercut the price of everyone else's OS to get in the position they are now, and they still do in a realistic sense. Even when linux is free, Window easily represents a better value for almost all users. Adjusting for inflation, XP Home is probably cheaper than Windows 3.0 was, so MS has not driven out the competition, and then raised prices, the way people picture a monopoly.
Let's say the govenment forced MS to charge $1000 for XP Home. Then we might possibly see some serious competition from others. Or maybe it would take $2000. Or maybe $3000. Whatever it takes to get serious competition. Is that what the government should do? After all, competition is good, isn't it?
I'm all for real competition. I am against government arranged fictitious competition.
People seem to think anti-trust law means you can't make anything else once you become dominant in one area. Not so. As long as all you are doing is using the huge capital accrued in one field to develop a product in another, there is no law against it. Should there be? If so, why?
MS, I think, does use underhanded sales tactics with OEMs. So do a lot of companies, whenever they can pull it off. I once saw a TV program about a new company trying to get a new soft drink on the shelves of supermarkets. It was good product, and cheap. They couldn't get super markets to put in on the shelves, because Pepsi and Coke pay the supermarkets outright for the shelf space. It's not illegal. But once you are declared a monopoly, like MS was, although not before, a marketing tactic might become illegal. The govenment then said that MS bundling their browser with their OS was illegally using their OS monopoly to further gain another monopoly with the browser. If the browser and OS were inseparable, there would not be a case, because they would have only been a single product.
And be realistic; the Internet browser is a part of the OS nowadays. The Internet is what the OS is all about for 90% of home computer sales. Using the Internet is as much a part of operating a computer as using a sound or video card, a scanner or printer, or even a hard disk. When I got my first few computers, the cost of a HD was beyond home users. People used 8" floppy drives ($400) holding about 250K for storage. What if the government had decided that operating a HD was not part of the OS, and MS had to unbundle HD operation from the OS? Fortunately, MS was so small the government wouldn't have noticed them when HDs started to be used in home computers. In those days, IBM owned the home computer market (really the small business computer market), and IBM considered that segment of their sales barely worth the trouble.
The story about Billion Gates and the Internet is that for a long time all those smart people Gates surrounds himself with tried in vain to get Gates to take a look at the Internet. Gates could not see the point. The smart guys didn't want to reorient MS, they just thought Gates ought to see what was happening for himself. Then Gates was pursuaded to devote a weekend to the Internet. Immediately afterwards, Gates decided to devote every resource possible at MS to making Windows the Internet OS. It wasn't long before Windows users were being informed regularly that yet another version of IE could be downloaded. Why? Was Gates suddenly tormented with nightmares that some other company might sell more Internet browsers than MS? No. Gates considers himself a visionary. With what he saw that weekend, he could envision the possibilty that some other OS that dealt with the Internet phenomenon better could beat out his OS. He was not interested in crushing Internet browser companies. Gates was making sure no competitor to Windows could arise, and he would do that by Windows becoming the Internet OS before that could possibly happen. If you read anything about Gates, you know that's how he thinks. Gates was not trying to get a monopoly in the Internet browser market, like the government case turned on, although that was the net result. He was insuring the dominance of Windows. You can imagine the cold sweat Gates was in when the government tried to get him to unbundle IE.
Gates does not think his OS has been completed. One day it is supposed to be the gateway to "The Information Highway." 3D environmental surround events transmitted into your home using some MS OS. Any information or media any place in the world instantly available. Real time telescope pictures from satellites throughout the solar system.
I do have a certain animosity toward MS, mainly because I have to cope with the shortcomings of their OS, even while it is by far the most sensible choice available. But let's have some perspective and realism. MS has been fair to the point of benevolence in comparison to pratically any other software company. Even MS's underhanded marketing tactics look cudly and cute next to what goes on in other businesses, like groceries, movies, TV, or music. MS's primary offence, which people find so unforgivable, is that they are successful. People may think William Gates is too powerful, but just think what the computer world would be like if instead a totalitarian megalomaniac like Steve Jobs had the position that Gates does, and be greatful.
Barnaby W. Füi
Elite Member
Netscape is the obvious analogy here, but they've taken out plenty of companies with various tactics. Apple (yeah, still around, but not exactly what they were in the old days), BeOS, Netware, OS/2, Corel (?) ...
I think people would deal with higher prices if they had better choice. Same reason that a lot of people hate Wal-mart. But then again, a lot of other people DO like Wal-mart (and a lot of people DO like Microsoft, obviously).
It's not illegal, it's just fvcked up. Well, assuming they do a crappy job of it, anyways.
I don't think a browser is very much like a driver. Definition of "OS" is murky anyways. Does "OS" mean a small 100MB base system? Or does "OS" mean 3GB of crap on top of that too? What makes this thing an OS component and that thing standalone software?
The road to hell is paved with good intentions. 😉 There are plenty of fvcked up politicians that probably think they're doing good too.
Um, forgive me if I'm not sympathetic.
OS/2, NextSTEP, DR-DOS, CP/M, Netware, Netscape, Opera, Amiga OS, BeOS and probably a whole host of other things that never had a chance to make it to market or make a impression.
MS basicly stands in the way of innovation. Look at AT&T, the Bell monopoly was a good thing in many people's eyes. They kept prices cheap and gave everybody a common phone service. They tried doing weird things to stiffle compition like trying to make it illegal to use phones made by someone other then AT&T.
Then when they split up under orders by the government, some people were pissed. They considured it a largely benificial monopoly. Prices raised, service quality wigged out in someplaces.
However what would it be like to day if the only source of the internet was dial-up thru AT&T? I think it would probably REALY REALY SUCK. Expensive and stupid. Everyone would have to have a dedicated data line to your house or something stupid like that. No cable modems allowed.
Look at MS and internet browsers. Gopher, Kermit, Mosiac, Netscape. Each a succession of better, faster, and more usefull ways to get hyper text (I suppose gopher isn't realy a browser per say). Then here comes IE. Now it's crap. No new things, no new innovations. IE is buggy as all get out. MS won't fix it's problems and won't make it work with the standards that it was designed to use. Anything new happened? Any new and usefull feature since last year? 2 years? Any revolutionary developements comming out of MS?
Nope anything new comes thru "plugins" to IE like, well java (which MS tried to squish, and lost) and stuff like Flash animations (which they seem to be attempting to take over).
Hell they even just got successfully sued for stealing the "plug-in" software technology they use from a now-defuct company thru not paying the proper liscencing for the technology!
It's a dilly of a situation indeed.
EeyoreX is of course entirely correct, had IBM won with OS/2 they'd be just as bad as MS, same thing with Apple, etc.
Frankly, Im starting to think the fundamental problem is with a single company controlling the OS, that will always make for an unfair playing field.
Maybe the OS itself should be controlled by some governing body that is there to serve the users, not it's shareholders.
Even the way the major OSS projects(Linux, BSD's primarily) are being run currently would be better since Linus&co are in fact in it for the technology and it's users, rather than for the money.
Of course companies like RedHat are in it for the money, but they can never control it.
Computers have become such an immensely important part of society, from large corporations to mom&pop, that I think it's a fundamental flaw to have one company run such a major part of the scene.
Just airing some thoughts...
EeyoreX is of course entirely correct, had IBM won with OS/2 they'd be just as bad as MS, same thing with Apple, etc.
Frankly, Im starting to think the fundamental problem is with a single company controlling the OS, that will always make for an unfair playing field.
Maybe the OS itself should be controlled by some governing body that is there to serve the users, not it's shareholders.
Even the way the major OSS projects(Linux, BSD's primarily) are being run currently would be better since Linus&co are in fact in it for the technology and it's users, rather than for the money.
Of course companies like RedHat are in it for the money, but they can never control it.
Computers have become such an immensely important part of society, from large corporations to mom&pop, that I think it's a fundamental flaw to have one company run such a major part of the scene.
Just airing some thoughts...
Definately. That's why monopoly is bad.
I am a pretty hard-core capitolist. I am all about working and making money, so IMO companies can be as evil as they want. IBM, Sun, MS, I realy don't care.
This is because if I don't like them I don't have to give them my money. If other people feel the same as me, these companies go out of business or change. Unfortuanately that doesn't work when people don't have a choice. MS seems to have changed, and has put forth a lot of effort to change their image, but... you know marketing is the one thing they are realy good at.
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