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Technology Stocks : MSFT Internet Explorer vs. NSCP Navigator
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To: Harvey Allen who wrote (23957)5/25/2000 12:41:00 AM
From: Gerald R. Lampton  Read Replies (2) of 24154
 
Absolutely breathtaking -- this judge has got real cojones.

I always thought this judge would break up Microsoft if DOJ were to ask him to do it. I never thought he'd be so hot to break it up that he'd go for something even more extreme than DOJ.

But the judge is right to question the idea of setting up two separate monopolies. The DOJ proposal has not been shown empirically to work. It's based on the assumption that, in an OS market characterized by a natural monopoly, a profit maximizing company writing software for the OS will want to treat all competing brands equally. That's an assumption that has not been shown to be true, at least not to those not privy to the DOJ's computer models.

I seem to recall some discussion on this board a long, long time ago on the subject of polluted Java. This was a while back, and my memory may be faded, but I seem to recall that I tried to argue that it would be irrational for software developers to write programs for the "native OS capabilities" (or whatever Microsoft's jargon was at the time) of polluted Java because they would be excluding all of the users with OS'es that don't run polluted Java. Hence, Microsoft's strategy of using polluted Java to drive out real Java would fail.

My recollection is that more than one person put me in my place on that one -- they argued that software developers would just write for whatever version of Java was dominant and forget about the versions that run best on the little guys' OS'es, or so somebody's computer models allegedly showed.

It seems to me that the same rationale applies to writing software apps for operating systems. What works for Microsoft when it comes to encouraging developers to write for polluted Java ought to work for the post-breakup OS company when it comes to encouraging developers to write for the dominant OS, or for the post-breakup Office company when it comes to encouraging developers to write new OSes.

Come to think of it, that's the whole premise of the DOJ's case -- that app writers will only write for the dominant OS and OS developers will want to run the dominant apps. Why should post-breakup Office app developers or post-breakup OS developers be any different?
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