Maybe I am talking to the air.
Or maybe you don't understand sarcasm. No big deal. The encyclopedia thing sounds like another Chrysler car radio- disk defrag- Gillette razor line, but that's just me.
As far as air goes, I prefer this statement of the Microsoft position.
Once it determines that a new company is a threat, Microsoft can deploy its integration strategy with a vengeance. In September 1995, Paul Maritz, the executive in charge of Microsoft's operating-system business, met with executives of Intel Corp., the leading microchip maker. It was a month after Netscape had sold shares to the public and the Internet start-up was suddenly a hot company.
When the discussion turned to Netscape, one Intel executive, who asked not to be identified, recalled Maritz saying: "We are going to cut off their air supply. Everything they're selling, we're going to give away for free." (from nytimes.com;
Of course, business is war, and war is hell, and we know what that makes Bill. But, as I've said previously, this sounds pretty much to me like leveraging the OS monopoly into an internet monopoly, and the Sherman Act speaks to that pretty directly. The current little legal tiff can't quite use the direct route. Don't think that means that Microsoft is home free if it gets off. Oops, I forgot the preferred terminology, substitute hegemony for monopoly above. Legally, I don't think it matters much. War crimes get punished too, sometimes. Sometimes not, of course, O.J. got off too.
Finally, a note on last week's ZDNN "chess game" thing, where the "Kenneth Starr witch hunt" line was raised. That couldn't possibly have been a Redmond plant, could it have? There was a settlement with the EU on ISP browser bundling, so it seems perfectly reasonable for the US to look into it too.
Cheers, Dan. |
