Microsoft digs own grave of mistrust
Trust and antitrust
By David Berlind
May 21, 2002
Just prior to launching my investigative report on whether Microsoft and IBM were plotting to take over the Internet, I received a phone call from my colleague and fellow columnist David Coursey asking me if I had forgotten to take my daily medication. He had good reason to wonder whether I had lost my mind. I'll be the first one to admit that the idea that two companies--even ones as big as Microsoft and IBM--could conspire take over the Internet on the basis of software patents and royalties is, well, "out there."
Casting further doubt upon my theory was Coursey's subsequent interview with Microsoft Platform Strategy Group General Manager Charles Fitzgerald, who said "While this may be disappointing to some conspiracy theorists, Microsoft has absolutely no ambition, plan, or desire to collect a royalty on Internet traffic." Fitzgerald went on to say, "Burdening the underlying standards with additional costs would both undermine this strategy and fly in the face of our business strategy of delivering high-volume, low-cost software."
Oops, A second opinion:
Hodges: And I take it you haven't decided you're not going to charge royalties?
Allchin: Um, I'm not going to make that statement here today. We're thinking about it.
"We're thinking about it." That's a bit different from what Fitzgerald told Coursey, that "Microsoft has absolutely no ambition, plan, or desire to collect a royalty on Internet traffic."
About Sun
In a story that explored Microsoft's and IBM's motives for not inviting Sun Microsystems to be one of the founding members of the Web Service Interoperability Organization (WS-I), officials from both companies concocted logic for the decision that was almost too easy to debunk.
But just in case anybody thought I forgot to take my medications on that one as well, the very same court transcript revealed that the decision to exclude Sun from the WS-I came right from the very top. In responding to the idea of the WS-I, which was code-named "Foo" at the time, Microsoft CEO Bill Gates wrote in an e-mail, "I can live with this if we have the positioning clearly in our favor" and "in particular, Sun not being one of the movers/announcers/founding member." (See "Microsoft's plot to block Sun revealed.")
In an interesting bout of clairvoyance that took place the week before the revelation of Gates' email, IBM mysteriously backpedaled on its resistance to allowing Sun into the WS-I as a board member. Now that the truth is out of the bag, it's easy to understand IBM's interest in distancing itself from a situation that's not only embarrassing, but that could easily lead to an antitrust inquiry of its own. Formed by IBM and Microsoft, the WS-I is an organization that will produce Web specifications; these specifications, if left unchecked (and much to the chagrin of the W3C), stand a good chance of becoming the de facto standard protocols that will make up the next-generation infrastructure of the Internet. If IBM and Microsoft own the intellectual property to those specifications, they could end up with a duopoly over the Internet.
Why Microsoft continues to dig itself into a grave of mistrust is anyone's guess. Surely, the company must understand that no one is going to want to do business with a company that has one story when its under oath, and another when its not. Perhaps Gates should delete the word "computing" from his "trustworthy computing" initiative and just work on the first part for now.
techupdate.zdnet.com |
