Erika, I'm glad you've quickly picked up on company line #1, if you have any criticism of Microsoft, you're a Microsoft hater. A rather tedious ad hominen attack, when it gets repeated about a hundred times.
On this particular issue, I'm naive high school civics guy. I don't say what the law is, or how it should be enforced. I just find the PR-based "We are the world" defense strategy Bill's carrying out fairly silly and extralegal. To repeat, I'm sure to no avail, lots of big companies past and present have lived with antitrust without making it front page news. Bill's quite innovative, turning an inherently arcane issue into the O.J. trial for the technoweenie set.
Long ago, I used to ritually say Microsoft has many fine products, generally at a good price. I quit saying that after having extensive experience with the integrity and uniformity of the Windows95 experience. But it's still sort of true, and Windows 98 is supposed to suck less, I hear.
Still, a big part of capitalism is supposed to be competition, at least in naive microeconomics, and outside of the antitrust context everybody who likes Microsoft laughs at the idea of anybody competing with them. Of course, in the antitrust context, the line mysteriously changes to "the whining crybabies should just shut up and compete". There's this hobgoblin in my small mind that can't quite handle the argument, maybe it's part of the duality of man. Or maybe it's like Bill said before the Senate, a bright innovator could replace Windows in a day! Bill wouldn't lie, would he?
Cheers, Dan. |
