Thank you for the Sherman Act explanation.
Despite the judicial animosity, I have been impressed by Jackson's prior rulings, and he is ultimately accountable for the correct discernment of facts in this case, as opposed to innuendo. I have the expertise to confirm the technical plausibility of the justifications offered by MSFT concerning the issues I had stated before with NSCP, APL, and INTC. It is the AOL testimony which seemed to me to be damaging to MSFT.
The problem I find with the Sherman Act 2 (monopoly laws) argument, is that so much of this issue seems mute, now that MSFT has integrated the "browser" into Win95 and Win98. MSFT was justified to integrate internet functionality into Windows. Windows now provides ISV's API's for developing their own browsers, their own back-end servers, their own communication applications sitting on top of Windows API's, and their own products which need support for interpreting HTML. NSCP was not fulfilling this need for developers. For MSFT to have also added a client app (IE) of their own which used this built-in Windows infrastructure, seems to me to be the least interesting part of MSFT development. I don't see how MSFT would somehow not have the right to develop internet products once it saw the viability of that product market. Also, MSFT has a well-known strategy of simultaneously developing development architectures for ISV's and then hosting their own apps on top of that architecture.
I will have a hard time accepting a just result if the outcome ends up technically and factually flawed. Have you ever heard of the saying "you cannot prove a negative"? How can anyone formulate and argument against their own intent? If the DOJ wants to assert that every single design decision, every e-mail, every sound bite was filled with hidden malicious intent on the part of MSFT, there is no way that MSFT can prove otherwise.
I also have a hard time with this "monopoly" classification. I think Forbes recently ran an article explaining how MSFT could quickly loose its domination (DOJ aside) and I agree (which is why I'm not holding MSFT stock at a PE of 60). Gates is not Rockefeller. Most of the code in the world is not owned by MSFT. Most of the code that exists is not even close to being owned by MSFT. Heck, I would even venture to guess that most code has not even been written yet. And that is why Linux poses such a serious threat to MSFT. That is why NSCP so easily lost its browser "monopoly". Whatever Rockefeller had in his possession, excluded everyone else. Gates does not have that true monopoly power to exclude possession of marketable assets. |
