Your understanding of the MS-CPQ dispute is incorrect, MS never threatened to put CPQ out of business or even to revoke their ability to ship Win95 for their mainstrewam products. The dispute involved only a single relatively small series of consumer products. The gentleman quoted by the DOJ is named Steve Decker, he is responsible for MS purchasing at CPQ. I know him personally. The DOJ framed this to make it look much bigger than it actually was.
CPQ had purchased a small company in San Mateo CA which made game SW, headed by a woman named Celeste Dunn. They were supposed to write applications for the Presario line which was looking for some market 'pull' at that time, especially for children's applications. This group of people in california (at that time about 30) engaged in a number of practices regarding the substitution of non-MS components into the OS before it was sold by CPQ. This would have created support problems for MS. The dispute between this small group and MS had gone on for several months.
Finally Celeste decided to take a hard line about her ability to do what she wanted with the SW, a position which included removing IE and substituting Netscape. Note that including Netscape is not a problem, and many CPQ machines (then and now) including the ones involved in the dispute already had netscape pre-loaded on every machine. This was not the problem for MS - their problem was removing IE when the license said it would be included with the OS.
Even so, their 'threat' was only related to this one product line, not to CPQ's mainstream business.
The press coverage of this issue, and your repeat of the myth, is typical of the kind of distortion and rumor that surround these business practices. If MS had tried to do something stupid like hold back Win95 from CPQ, what do you think CPQ would do? MS would not start Nuclear War with their biggest customer. CPQ does not get the bits from MS, they make them and tell MS how many they made. Even if MS tried to stop CPQ from shipping Win95, CPQ could claim irreperable harm, just keep shipping, and tie it up in court for years. This is the real world not 'ozzie and harriet'. |
