To: XiaoYao who wrote (16854 ) 1/29/1998 6:41:00 PM From: Daniel Schuh Respond to
Microsoft's contradiction economist.com A sense of grievance and insecurity hangs in the air at Microsoft's Redmond headquarters. Despite the relaxed campus layout-low-rise buildings, plush lawns, shaded copses-and strictly casual dress code, there is a Moonie-like intensity about the place. Microserfs feel abused and misunderstood by the outside world and cannot understand why their unceasing efforts to improve Windows are seen as anti-competitive. They just want to be left alone to expand the business by producing "great software" and working with technology partners to the betterment of all. Sworn statements from computer manufacturers, extracted by the Justice Department, show exactly how Microsoft ruthlessly used its control over what appears on the PC desktop as the means to displace Netscape's Navigator with its own Internet Explorer browser. Although "end-users" were free to adapt their desktops, the computer manufacturers had to ensure, as a condition of their Windows licence, that when a machine was switched on for the first time the desktop had every icon on it that Microsoft decreed. Faced with the threat-explicit in the case of Compaq-that they would lose their Windows licence and thus their business if they removed the Internet Explorer icon, PC makers all meekly fell into line. Whether Microsoft stopped to wonder whether its actions in meeting the Netscape threat were legal is not known. But Microsoft's strategy and culture propelled the company to deploy every means at its disposal to resist the threat. That is why the fight will continue and why Microsoft is prepared to risk so much. In this sense, the company's recent conciliatory gestures are probably only a clearing of the decks before the real legal battle resumes in April. If Microsoft loses the right to define what Windows is by adding new capabilities, it believes its business will be hobbled. What is more, the company fears that the narrow case of linking the browser to Windows is only the first round: if the government wins, it will push ahead with a far more comprehensive antitrust investigation. Small companies that have a technology which could be subsumed into Windows are also wary. One Silicon-Valley venture capitalist who is close to Microsoft says: "I don't send my companies to Redmond unless I have to. Too often they just get the ideas sucked out of them without getting anything in return." The San Francisco-based Business Marketing Group exists purely to guide small companies through their dealings with Microsoft. This is Microsoft's contradiction. The firm is under pressure to fight on. It is propelled by the need to grow, by its culture-even by Mr Gates's belief that he is right in principle as an entrepreneur to resist the bureaucrats' attempts to stifle him. But as Microsoft grows, its dominance unites competitors against it, makes potential partners think twice and even worries allies. And, inevitably, it draws the unwelcome eye of the antitrust authorities.
