Experts Cast Doubt On Microsoft Arguments techweb.com
Since I slipped up and got a little intemperate in the post before this, I got to post this article for backup. Of course, these experts are just dumb techies like me who don't understand the necessity of a proprietary lock in business, and the wonder and glory of the beautiful Windows World vision that's due to supercede that anarchic internet/world wide web any day now.
Anyway, a select quote:
(Microsoftie arguing that the web browser is just like file find????)
"We continue to enhance that when new sources of information [such as the Internet] become available to users," Neukom said.
But some legal observers, along with the Justice Department, take a very skeptical view of this argument.
"If the courts are going to allow them to make that argument, then they can put any application they want [into Windows]," said Seattle attorney Ralph Palumbo, a counsel for Caldera in its suit against what it says is Microsoft's operating systems monopoly. "There would be no reason why they couldn't put word processors and spreadsheets into the operating system."
The court will be dealing strictly with the language of the original consent decree, rather than broader antitrust issues, Palumbo noted. If Microsoft can persuade the judge that the definition of operating system feature can be expanded to include other associated applications, then it could beat the department's petition, he said.But courts have become more technically sophisticated in the past several years, he added.
"I can't see how the court can't see that the browser markets and the operating system markets are not different markets," Palumbo said.
Not that I haven't made this argument before. In Microsoft terms, anything they throw into a dll is part of the os, if they say so, and since all of Office is dll-ized now, Microsoft could say it was all part of the os, and say OEM's had to buy the whole shebang for every PC sold, for, say, $200, and nobody could do anything about it. Nice position to be in, and I've never said Microsoft isn't a good investment, but it's a definition of OS that is meaningless outside of Windows World.
Or maybe the browser really is just like file find.
Cheers, Dan. |
