<<All the king's horses
So Judge Jackson says Microsoft must split in two. Big deal. It doesn't matter anymore. The appeals process won't be done for years. By then, as Kara Swisher at the Wall Street Journal writes, "We'll all be surfing the Internet telepathically and only about 16 people will be using the Windows operating system."
The courts are too slow to keep up with the Internet. In the Microsoft case, the horse has left the barn. Splitting up Microsoft may have positive effects for computer vendors and some software companies, but it's too late to revive competition in the browser market: Netscape is already dead. Likewise, the application market is kaput: Wordperfect, Lotus 123 ... gone. But who cares? The action isn't on the desktop.
Microsoft is already deep in the trenches fighting a far larger and more interesting war, that for the Internet's infrastructure. And in that battle there's no need for a legal ruling, as Redmond is clearly just another player, competing for, and often losing to, Sun, Oracle, and other companies.
It's time to move beyond this lawsuit -- or to get in front of the issues, instead of remaining as far behind as the Justice Department has been to date.
-Rafe Needleman
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