Analysis: Giving Microsoft's Competitors a Fighting Chance nytimes.com
Fun is fun, but this is the substantial article of the day from the good gray Times. Speaks to a few recent topics. I'm sure Reggie will explain away this one, another one of those "occassional reference to a news article without any justification for its contents." Bwahahahahaaaa. As if Reggie has ever given justification for anything. Needless to say, this article doesn't quite fit in with the "Microsoft Rules" theory of life, the universe, and everything.
Conclusion, quoted without comment.
The government's seeming fixation on Netscape's browser flows not from a judgment that browsers are in themselves especially important. But as a technical matter, they might some day serve as a substitute operating system -- a platform on which word processors, spread sheets and other applications programs run. If so, they could eliminate the importance of Windows or any other operating system.
For that reason, browsers pose a threat to Microsoft, which explains its previous attempts to write exclusionary contracts that prohibit its partners from promoting Netscape's Navigator.
Whatever the outcome of the suit, the government cannot micromanage software markets. It cannot know if Netscape's browser has a future. But it does not have to know. The point of antitrust laws is not, as some of the government's statements and remedies may wrongly suggest, to give a specific competitor a helping hand.
Rather, antitrust principles are solely designed to preserve the possibility that a smart company has a fighting chance to flourish in a market. The remedies of the Justice Department may wind up doing nothing for Netscape, but the test is whether they provide opportunities for anyone else.
Cheers, Dan. |
