Deja vu all over again ...
from the Wall Street Journal.
New Digital Camera Deals Kodak A Lesson in Microsoft's Methods
Trial Use With Windows XP Gave Microsoft an Edge, Photo Firm Says
By JOHN R. WILKE and JAMES BANDLER
Staff Reporters of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
ROCHESTER, N.Y. -- Shortly after Thanksgiving last year, Philip Gerskovich, who was deep into the design of a new digital camera for Eastman Kodak Co., discovered his company was headed for a collision with Microsoft Corp.
His team was developing new software to manipulate digital photos and needed to make sure it was compatible with Microsoft's latest version of Windows, the basic software that runs most new computers. An early version of Microsoft's newest software, code-named Whistler, had just arrived at Kodak's software labs. When Mr. Gerskovich and his team loaded it onto their computers, they were shocked by what they saw.
When Kodak cameras were plugged into a PC loaded with Kodak software, it was Microsoft's own photo software that popped up -- not Kodak's. Camera customers would have to go through a cumbersome process to get Kodak's software to pop up every time, and most would probably just use Microsoft's.
More troubling, the Kodak team found that the new program steered orders for picture prints to companies that would have to pay to be listed in Windows, and that these companies also would be asked to pay Microsoft a fee on every photo sent through Windows.
The Kodak team felt double-crossed. They had worked with Microsoft and the camera industry for a year on a new photo-transfer standard that allowed Windows to recognize when a camera was plugged in. Now, Kodak felt, the standard was being used against Kodak and other digital-camera makers, because it favored Microsoft's competing camera software, embedded in the planned new version of Windows.
"We were being frozen out," says Mr. Gerskovich, a 44-year-old Kodak vice president. "Consumers were effectively being denied a choice of which photo software they could use. More important, they should be able to send photos to any Internet printing service they choose -- without paying a tax to Microsoft."
Kodak's story offers a snapshot of a now-familiar tale in the software business. Despite the government's antitrust case against Microsoft, which was partly upheld and partly reversed by a U.S. Court of Appeals last week, the software giant continues to use its monopoly operating-system software as a lever to pry its way into new businesses. And companies such as Kodak are responding by crying foul, hiring antitrust lawyers and lobbyists.
Microsoft rejects any suggestion that it misbehaved. "Kodak is an important partner, and we want their products to work well with Windows," says Vivek Varma, Microsoft's chief spokesman. But Kodak "didn't respond to our numerous attempts to work with them to correct the problem. These are complicated technical issues, and Kodak should have tried harder to work them out with us before running to their lawyers and Washington lobbyists."
Mr. Varma adds: "Any suggestion that we had hidden motives in the design of Windows XP is untrue."
Microsoft ... no sense of shame since 1986. |
