Microsoft Cites AT&T to Fight Breakup nytimes.com
In a very Microsoftish way, it seems.
Of course, there is nothing to demonstrate that if Microsoft is broken up, its experience, for better or worse, will resemble AT&T's. Still, in invoking the AT&T case to justify some of its arguments, Microsoft is in some instances misstating the record.
Microsoft misstating the record? Next thing you know, they'll be telling us the pope's Catholic!
Consider Bell Labs, which was the vaunted research arm of AT&T, and its counterpart at Microsoft, the research division. The government's breakup proposal makes no recommendation for how Microsoft's research group would be treated; that would be decided later.
Nonetheless, Microsoft's brief said: "Research and development organizations are fragile organisms, and the notion that they can be pulled apart with minimal adverse consequences is dangerously naive."
"The one unit of AT&T that remained intact during AT&T's divestiture of its regional operating companies," it adds, "was Bell Laboratories, an organization with strong parallels to Microsoft as a whole.
Jeez, in the bear defecating in the woods department, Microsoft, as usual, has no shame. Let's hear about all the basic research Microsoft has done. Well, there was Nathan Myhrvold and his supersonic dinosaur tails, but he's gone now. What a contribution that was, though. Then there's the Microsoft triumph in speech recognition, Bill's holy grail for years now, and Microsoft's results in the field? They bought some stuff (I mean, they "invested" in) Lernout and Hauspie, what else was there? Maybe I missed something.
Cheers, Dan.
P.S. On the "I love you" watch, I meant to post this last week, about Bill's vintage whine in Time magazine:
Gates predicts Love Bug Apocalypse if MS broken up theregister.co.uk
I looked up the original Time article when this came up, but it doesn't seem to be there any more. Odd, that, I may have to dig it up in print, just for the entertainment record. Oops, here it is, just a little date confusion: time.com |
