Good post Morgan. There are no easy solutions. Here are some of the dangers:
..
The odds are, therefore, that the judge will issue his ruling
on remedies before the end of July. Whether he accepts
the plaintiffs? proposals remains uncertain. But, for all Mr
Neukom?s protests, it is hard to disagree with Mr Klein?s
view that his plan cleaves closely to the court?s findings that
Microsoft repeatedly and systematically broke the antitrust
laws, both to maintain its Windows monopoly and to
extend it to web browsers. Given the seriousness of
Microsoft?s violations and the judge?s belief that these had
a chilling effect on innovation, it would be surprising if he
took a different view.
As well as hoping to persuade Judge Jackson that a
break-up would re-establish competition and have the
great merit of being self-policing, Mr Klein is eager to see
conduct remedies put in place now, which is within the
court?s power. Without them, he fears that Microsoft is
preparing to use the same old tactics to gain an unfair
advantage in markets at the opposite end to its PC
monopoly?industrial-strength servers and handheld
devices such as personal digital assistants (PDAs).
The DOJ believes it has evidence that Microsoft is planning
versions of Office and other software that will run properly
only on computer networks powered by the server edition
of Windows 2000. Indeed, Microsoft?s critics say that the
idea of NGWS is to create a family of Internet applications
that are designed to work exclusively with Windows,
extending from servers to PCs to PDAs and Internet mobile
phones. The government cites an e-mail sent by Mr Gates
in July 1999 that showed a willingness to change Office
applications to favour devices that run on Windows, even if
that damaged the interests of customers who rely on the
ubiquitous Palm Pilot. This is an extraordinary insight into
Microsoft?s refusal to restrain itself even under the most
intense antitrust scrutiny.
This kind of behaviour and power, in the DOJ?s view,
makes Microsoft a unique company controlling a unique
bottleneck. It has concerns about other recent Internet
developments, such as the patenting of web business
models and processes, or the potential for abuse by
dominant business-to-business exchanges. But the DOJ
dismisses the fear that a victory against Microsoft will be
the prelude to an assault on other high-tech titans such as
Cisco, Intel, Sun Microsystems or Oracle. None, it is
convinced, not even a firm as dominant as Intel, which has
had previous run-ins with antitrust enforcers, remotely
resembles Microsoft.
economist.com. |
