Schools of business and political science will be using the assassination of America's premier company in America's premier industry as a case study for generations to come. I can just see study groups searching for an answer to the question "Why did they destroy the source of so much prosperity?", and with the clarity of sight which often comes too late, point the finger of blame on the usual suspects: envy, greed, opportunism, ....
That's one way to look at it. Another way to look at it would be to go back a little farther, to Greek tragedy and the classical mortal flaw of hubris.
Legally, the problem is, Microsoft blew it. They could have negotiated some relatively trivial settlement with Jackson on the original consent decree question, and it wouldn't have hurt them in the least. OSR2 - IE, none of the OEMs would have taken them up on the offer. Instead, the brilliant legal minds of Microsoft decided it was a better idea to spit in his face.
So, they got a real antitrust case, and the legal brilliance continued. Sorry, the "innovation = bundled software" definition may go down well with true believers, but why should it have any legal standing? It certainly doesn't have much meaning technically. Meanwhile, in the courtroom, the Microsoft witnesses just didn't hold up very well.
So whose fault it it, anyway? Personally, my main problem with Microsoft is that Win9x is a mess, a self-destructive OS, and all the brilliant minds of Microsoft don't seem much worried about fixing it. The business plan says you should move up to NT, at 3-4x the cost (on $500 PCs? still getting cheaper?). Or maybe WinCE, which will run approximately none of the Windows software base?
On the "new prosperity" thing, a technical point. What's driving all the new prosperity now is the internet, and no matter how much revisionist history gets written at Redmond, Microsoft didn't invent it. At this point they dominate the "client" side, but they sure don't dominate the infrastructure.
I follow the case for entertainment. I don't see any remedies mentioned that would do much good. I also don't see any remedies being mentioned that would "destroy" Microsoft. "Structural remedies" would more likely be good for the shareholders than bad. Of course, a breakup might be bad for Bill's dreams of world domination, but a world dominated by "the integrity and uniformity of the Windows experience", as the PR flacks put it early on, is, you know, perhaps a little problematic too?
Cheers, Dan. |
