To: Daniel Schuh who wrote (17766 ) 3/4/1998 10:55:00 AM From: Daniel Schuh Read Replies (3) | Respond to
Mr. Gates Takes the Stand nytimes.com Bill Gates's appearance yesterday before the Senate Judiciary Committee lacked the drama early in the century, when Congress hauled in J. P. Morgan to defend Wall Street's frightening reach into the sinews of the economy. Yesterday's hearings also lacked the impact of turn-of-the-century investigations of Standard Oil's manipulative stranglehold -- an inquiry that informed later antitrust law and court doctrines. Even so, it was a moment of no small importance -- the first confrontation between the information age's wealthiest and most gifted entrepreneur and a Congress that is trying to figure out whether Mr. Gates is the consumer's best friend or a crafty monopolist determined to crush all competitors. Despite Microsoft's 90 percent share of the market for operating systems, he said, the company could not be called a monopoly because its choke hold might disappear tomorrow. He insisted that his contracts with equipment manufacturers and Internet service providers did not prohibit their customers from buying rival software. But he failed to point out that some of those contracts placed high hurdles between customers and non-Microsoft products. This page has argued for the following antitrust test: Are Microsoft's practices driven largely by technological necessity, yielding significant consumer benefits? Or has Microsoft designed and marketed its operating system, Windows, for the purpose of blocking consumers from doing business with its rivals? If the latter, then the antitrust laws are an ample remedy. nytimes.com , where long time internet beat guy takes on integrated software vs. modular software, and the sidebar IE 4.0: Under the Hood, nytimes.com , the best attempt I've seen to plow through the dll-hell "IE integration" "beyond the comprehension of mere mortals" puzzle.
