As always, you have many good points. However...
But what did Intel's strategy get it? All that antitrust training -- and Intergraph still got its TRO. All that backroom dealing and soft-peddling, and the FTC is still going to sue them.
I didn't mean to imply that the DOJ or FTC or whomever will sit back and let you take over the world as long as you act nice. Also they are two different companies with two different products so it's hard to compare them. But the latest FTC action on Intel didn't have 20 State Attorney Generals badmouthing Intel all over CNN and local newspapers. There are no emails about "cutting off ... air supply" floating around. Whatever happens with Intel and the Government(s), Intel has reaped far less bad publicity. And that means that their pursuers will have far less political interest in pursuing them. Compare that to Microsoft saying, in essence, "prove that you can be tough enough to take us down."
The Consent Decree is ambiguous. It says that Microsoft cannot condition the licensing of any "product" upon the purchase of another "product." It does not say anything about licensing an icon, or that forcing the licensing of only part of the product is not the same thing as forcing the OEM to take the whole product.
So Microsoft needed to get this cleared up. And, it needed to make the point that the government is not competent at designing software. In spite of the fact that the situation was a public relations disaster for a short while, I think it accomplished both objectives.
Perhaps, but what is the utility of these objectives? Embarassing the government is a very bad thing to do in any case. Furthermore, the ultimate spin on this was that both Microsoft and the Government knew what had to be done (the equivalent of what is done when you drag the icon to the trash), but Microsoft decided to use legal trickery to stick their thumb in the DOJ's eye.
Microsoft could have shown up the government by asking for clarifications early on and stating their problems with the ruling.
The *only* effect of their doing all this in so public a manner was the public relations disaster.
What was he supposed to say: "Yes, Senator, I am an evil monopolist" "Yes, Senator, I beat up on innocent OEMs"?
He's supposed to answer the question. Specifically, Hatch asked if Microsoft's deals with any ISPs precluded advertising Netscape. The correct answer to this question is Yes. This answer was going to come out no matter what. Therefore, Bill Gates had to say Yes. That would have provided Gates an opportunity to defend the practice. By evading the question and forcing (allowing?) Hatch to repeat it three times, Gates implied that he knew he was doing something wrong.
This particular tactic is one that is mentioned in Bugliosi's book about being honest and upfront in jury trials. In this case, Gates was on the stand and the public was the jury. He was ill prepped by his lawyers. |
