This article raises some interesting questions when read from the perspective of someone trying to prove an antitrust case based on the theory that Microsoft has an OS monopoly.
I'd Bet on Microsoft
Dvorak, John C.
05/05/98
PC Magazine
Page 87
(COPYRIGHT 1998 Ziff-Davis Publishing Company)
The last industry battle looms as Intel and Microsoft have mostly
vanquished their competition but still fear each other. Intel is afraid that Microsoft will do something to move the platform off the Intel architecture. This is a paranoid thought and based solely on the fact that at one point Microsoft was going to port Windows NT to everything! Microsoft fears Intel is eventually going to create its own operating system and optimize its chips for its own OS, cutting Microsoft out of the picture. Kind of like what Microsoft allegedly does to people who write applications for Windows.
"DOS isn't done until Lotus won't run."
With both companies surviving in a heightened state fueled by intense paranoia and a siege mentality, something has to give, someday. What's interesting is that each company works from a staggeringly different philosophy. In fact, Microsoft's basic thinking is much more contemporary and seems to me to be the thinking that will win any mano a mano struggle.
Let's examine the differences.
In a nutshell, Microsoft does not suffer from the NIH (not invented here) syndrome common to Intel and some other companies. You run into this mentality mostly in industries that are engineering- top-heavy. The attitude is, "We know the right way to do something. Everyone else is wrong." This kind of thinking flows into standards committees, causing infinite delays as two arrogant know-it-all engineers start butting heads, each claiming infinite wisdom and righteousness. The possibility that they can both be right or wrong never enters the debate.
This syndrome dominates Intel's thinking: Intel does not buy technology, it develops technology. Intel licenses nothing except patents for technologies it believes it has simultaneously developed. Intel will use outside technologies when necessary to enhance its direction. Common belief says that Intel invests in companies more to get them on the Intel bandwagon than to incorporate their technology. I'm sure an Intel engineer (who will always be right) will cite numerous examples (all minor) of where I'm wrong in these assumptions, but this is the general thinking. Let me quote from a recent Microprocessor Report: "Intel has never in its history produced a
part that it did not develop. . . . The company's history and its
mind-set -- some would call it NIH--discourage such a move."
I bring this up because of the fabulous StrongARM chip and its
technology, which Digital handed to Intel on a silver platter. Many consider this chip one of the finest low-power chips ever developed, and it looks as if Intel, because of its corporate nature, might simply let the chip die. I recommend you read Jim Turley's excellent editorial in Microprocessor Report (February 16, 1998; www.MDRonline.com).
Microsoft is just the opposite. As a development house, it has no
NIH-based pride. It prefers to buy technology from someone else. Remember that Microsoft bought DOS from Seattle Computer Products for $50,000 and turned DOS into the cash cow that made the company what it is today. Original DOS code is still in products being sold to this day. Why reinvent the wheel?
This is the kind of smart thinking that makes Microsoft so hot. "We
didn't think of that idea. We bought it from someone else. So?" If Microsoft's philosophy were used at Intel, you could be certain that the ARM chip would be high on the agenda and turned into a serious profit center. The Alpha chip would be given an Intel part number and pushed into the high end like nothing you've ever seen.
I'm convinced that Compaq and Intel are on a collision course to a
merger, and Compaq needs those Alpha chips to run the powerful Digital servers. But with or without the merger, Intel engineers and their NIH problem will dominate the thinking in the company. The result will be the end of the Alpha and the end of the ARM. It's like throwing money away, something Microsoft would never do.
This attitude will eventually haunt Intel. Microsoft is seen as
dangerous, because it can gobble up any company or compete on similar products. This is much more frightening than Intel's old-fashioned NIH approach to business, which works only because Intel got a hot hand with its x86 architecture and things fell into place quickly. But many of us recall the days of the 8080, when the sudden emergence of the Z-80 chip put Intel into a catch-up mode.
And the company has not made flawless decisions. Intel should loosen up a bit. If Microsoft ever got into the chip business, Intel would be doomed.
Leaving aside his comments about NIH and who would win, I think it raises the following questions which need answers:
To what extent is Intel already an actual or potential competitor of Microsoft in the OS space?
If Intel is an actual or potential competitor to Microsoft in the OS space, what does that do to DOJ's argument that Microsoft has an OS monopoly that it can abuse?
Depending on how persuasive the answers are, they may or may not change my views on breaking up the company. |
