Due Processor: Hey! Computers Go Faster Than the Courts. nytimes.com
This is a fairly dull story, but there's one bit at the end that's interesting.
Antitrust may be a turn-of-the-century doctrine, but the government has dealt with issues remarkably similar to the ones posed by Microsoft in the not-too-distant past.
Take the claim that because Microsoft controls the first screen that people see when they turn on their computers, its Windows operating system is an "essential facility" for any company trying to do online commerce.
Owning that gateway to the Internet becomes intriguing to antitrust officials if Microsoft uses it to give an edge to its own Internet services.
Microsoft, for example, has given a favored place on the desktop to its World Wide Web travel service, Expedia -- an opportunity that the rival Travelocity service, run by the Sabre Group, says it was denied.
Sabre has first-hand experience with such matters, since 15 years ago it was in Microsoft's shoes.
Sabre is the computerized reservation system started by American Airlines. In the early 1980s, Sabre came under fire from rival airlines and Washington just as Microsoft is today, in a policy debate over computer screens and who determines the prime slots on that vital piece of information-age real estate.
Sabre put its computer terminals on the desks of thousands of travel agents and displayed its flights at the top of those screens -- a huge advantage because 90 percent of all bookings were made from the first screen.
American's rivals took their complaints to Washington. The Justice Department investigated. Congress held hearings. Eventually, the Civil Aeronautics Board issued rules saying flights on the reservations systems had to be listed by impartial criteria like time of departure or ticket price.
"We were certainly singing a different tune back then," said Bruce Charendoff, executive director of government affairs for Sabre. "The common issue in both cases is market power. As history has shown, if you have it, you use it -- unless you're restrained."
I guess the Microsoft line would be that the government was being unfair then, and it's being unfair now. Others might differ.
Cheers, Dan. |
