Good thinking from WSJ this AM:
Nobody should underestimate the campaign of vilification and political
> gamesmanship by Microsoft's competitors that helped bring us to this
> week's finding that Microsoft had committed "illegal" business acts. Bill
> Gates rates up there with the most admired Americans in polls; the public
> is sophisticated enough to know that antitrust "wrongs" are fussy
> technicalities, not moral failings. Maybe some of his opponents are having
> second thoughts after getting bounced around in the week's Nasdaq turmoil,
> clearly a reaction in part to the Microsoft verdict.
>
> That said, the tedious processes of the law guaranteed that even before
> the case record was closed, this week's decision would be based on how the
> world looked to Netscape, oh, around mid-1995. We trust we won't be
> hurting Judge Jackson's feelings when we say the disjunction between legal
> time and Internet time makes his decision myopic and anachronistic in the
> extreme.
>
> The judge embraces an argument about Microsoft quashing an emergent
> Netscape "platform" for "applications" that might have competed with
> Microsoft's platform/applications. He leaves the impression we've sunk
> into the dark ages because we don't have a Netscape word processor.
>
> In fact there is a huge new platform for non-Microsoft applications. It's
> called the Web. By picking up the gantlet that Netscape threw down,
> Microsoft drove forward the browser technology and ubiquity that make
> possible the amazing things we see today. There's no way we'd be this far
> along if Microsoft had left development of the browser to Netscape. We'd
> say markets have worked fine, unless you have a reason to wish that
> billions of dollars had ended up in the pockets of Jim Clark and James
> Barksdale instead of those of Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer.
>
> Judge Jackson misses the forest, meadows, glades and glens by focusing on
> a patch of lawn. Everything he accuses Microsoft of using its "monopoly"
> power to stop from happening is happening, on a much larger scale, in the
> vast world that has popped into existence since this suit was first
> agitated. Instead of creating another dinky operating system or word
> processor, we're now in the business of creating (non-Microsoft)
> applications like "global auto industry" or "global access to the stock
> market" or "global access to books."
JFD |
