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Hip-hip-hooray?by Mitch Stone, Editor/Publisher Over the last few years, Microsoft has openly taunted the Department of Justice, daring them to bring antitrust charges. And now, after months of dancing a dangerous Tarantella with the company, Reno's Rangers have hauled Microsoft into court on a laundry list of alleged antitrust law violations. Along for the ride came the attorneys general of twenty states. Hip-hip-hooray? Hardly. The better part of a year has passed since Attorney General Reno announced her department's first suit against Microsoft. And what do consumers and the government have little to show for the effort but a pocket full of smoke? Likewise, there's little reason to expect that the current charges will, in the long run, serve much purpose but to make everyone involved wearier, poorer and not much wiser. To hear some of this site's critics argue, though, you'd suppose that Boycott Microsoft was somehow responsible for the government's antitrust lawsuit. Nice try folks, but the entire concept of dragging the company into court doesn't square with this site's less than enthusiastic view of antitrust law enforcement as a means of maintaining access to choice and innovation. It also doesn't follow from the effort's name. Remember the name? It's right there, on top of the front page. No matter -- in recent days, our mail has included an unusually fertile sampling of letters from people insisting that all criticism of a rich, successful company like Microsoft (and a rich, successful person like Bill Gates) can only be motivated by envy. They can imagine no other reason why anyone would report on the wrongdoings of the wealthy. So busy are they prostrating themselves before the gods of commerce that they fail to recognize the basic absurdity of their argument, which effectively endows the wealthy and successful with an infallibility shield of papal proportions. Inoculating the wildly affluent against all scrutiny of their behavior may seem utterly logical to the camp that regards government interference in the economy as inherently evil, but the rest of us have to scratch our heads and wonder if it is really true that the titans of industry can do no wrong. The rest of us also have to acknowledge in these matters the imperfect role of politics, which it has been observed, can be defined as the skilled use of blunt objects. The checkered history of the application of antitrust laws suggests that they are usually wielded with all the deftness of a two-by-ten plank, and with about the same indelicate results. Reflexive skeptics must automatically ask themselves if the government and the courts possess either the will or the skill to solve the Microsoft Problem, and to question whether consumers will ever benefit from the solution. Even more to the point, doubters among us will have to wonder if we can afford to wait that long. That being said, we have to acknowledge that the government's suit has served at least one useful purpose: bringing to light what Microsoft says when they think we won't overhear. We've learned first-hand from government subpoenaed internal memoranda of Microsoft's mortal fear of competition, and how they plotted their operating system strategy to specifically ensure "that Netscape never gets a chance." So now, when Bill Gates smiles through clenched teeth, and swears that his company is only interested in pursuing "cool technology" for the benefit of consumers, we can reach into that bag of quotes and ask him to explain why a company official opined, "it will be very hard to increase market share on the merits of Internet Explorer 4 alone. It will be more important to leverage the Operating System asset to make people use IE instead of Navigator." And when Chairman Gates contends, as he does again and again these days, that the PC clone manufacturers are free to provide content of their own choosing, we can ask if that statement is reconciled against the facts. Thanks to the now-public internal documents, we can hoist up the mast Microsoft's memo denying Compaq the simple request of deleting the IE icon from the desktop. So even as the government's case slowly wends its way through the courts, we can keep in mind the reason Microsoft has been brought to heel by the Department of Justice. Microsoft's legal troubles are not, as some insist, a function of success-envy, but simply a result of their anticompetitive methods of achieving that success. It is also a product of the abuse of success. But finally, a very real danger of the government's antitrust action is that it will lull us into a false sense of security -- and impart the feeling that we can relax while the government looks after our business. But this was never the case, and is even less so now. How the marketplace responds to our needs is ultimately our individual responsibility. The government may provide us with some of the tools, but in the final analysis, the government can't form our conscience, and they can't make our choices. We have to do those things for ourselves. Previous keynotes: Hip-Hip-Hooray? (20 May 1998) Published: 20 May 1998 |
What Microsoft is doing is targeting specific markets it wants to be in, copying the products of the leading companies as close as it legally can and giving them away through one means or another, usually by bundling it as part of one existing product. It's called the 'fast follower' strategy. Microsoft is not about innovation. It never has been, and everyone knows that.
RICHARD SHAFFER, Technologic Partners
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