Interesting indeed, John. Pretty long to go through point by point, so I'll just pick up the first couple dubious points I ran into.
Why is Redmond, Wash.-based Microsoft subject to a harsher antitrust investigation than Santa Clara, Calif.-based Intel?
Microsoft has more domestic competitors (via individual software applications) than Intel. Yes, Intel faces AMD (Advanced Micro Devices Inc. of Sunnyvale, Calif.) and Cyrix (Corp. of Richardson, Texas, a unit of National Semiconductor Corp. in Santa Clara, Calif.), but not much more. Domestic politics favor attack of Microsoft over Intel.
Right. So, what has happened to the price of microprocessors in the last year or two, and what has happened to the price of Windows? Who gets in the door to bundle an alternative to Office with the OEMs? Aside from the fact that Intel is under investigation, also.
How does the process work?
I'll explain with a case. Remember the case involving the proposed merger of Microsoft and Intuit? The market that was supposedly being monopolized, online banking, didn't even exist. And no one had any market share to speak of. That shows how a case is brought for political reasons, not market share measures. It also shows that there aren't hard-fast economic and legal principles guiding investigators.
Uh huh. We've been through that a time or two here. The banker division of the international ilk conspiracy at work again. There's the most straightforward explanation, that the dominant OS/Office app software firm buying the dominant personal finance software firm is the kind of thing that routinely sends off antitrust alarms, but that would be far too simple.
In the first few questions, we find highly debatable opinions stated blandly as facts. Facts are stubborn things, or stupid things, or what was yours, John, difficult? So, IBD dug up a friend of Charles "Rick" Rule from the Reagan era to argue Bill's case for him, showing once again the political naivity Microsoft is famous for. Microsoft is welcome to bring him to testify in court, as appropriate, in this matter and future matters. It's up to the judge to decide the relevance of his viewpoint.
Cheers, Dan. |
