Business World:
An Antitrust War Horse Comes in From the Pasture
By Holman W. Jenkins Jr.
07/15/98
The Wall Street Journal
(Copyright (c) 1998, Dow Jones & Company, Inc.)
Judge Robert Bork wrote the book 20 years ago against ill-reasoned, drop-of-the-hat antitrust enforcement. He was a leading light of the Chicago school free-marketers, winners of all those Nobels. So when he came to lunch last week accompanied by his Netscape minders, those of us inclined to doubt the case against Microsoft were naturally all ears.
What does our most famous antitrust skeptic have to say in favor of the government suing our leading software company?
Boiled down to a single question, Judge Bork says Bill Gates's decision to roll the browser into the operating system was done only to poison the well for Netscape's competing browser. It can't be justified as making the operating system a better product. How does he know? "People tell me."
We asked twice to make sure. Yep, "people tell me."
Not to put too fine a point on a knotty technical matter, but nobody in their right mind would design a general purpose operating system these days without integrating Web functions.
Just ask Sony, Matsushita, Philips, Motorola and AT&T. A decade ago they were already pouring millions into General Magic trying to create an operating system, Magic Cap, pregnant with network skills. They saw which way the wind was blowing.
Ask Apple. On the day he arrived, Apple's would-be savior Gil Amelio announced a gameplan of "seamlessly" integrating the Internet with the Macintosh operating system. Apple's Vietnam-like attempt to write a new OS, called Copland, would have included Cyberdog, allowing users to browse the Web. "We don't see why users would need or want a separate browser," explained global research chief David Nagel.
Or just read Judge Bork's brief for Netscape. The devil theory of Microsoft revolves around the idea that "network computing" poses a mortal threat to Microsoft's software sitting on a desktop. Falling PC prices have already spoiled this scenario. But one aspect nobody disputes: The future of computing is online all-the-time.
It would be weird if this did not have implications for the operating system. Nobody wants to laboriously point and click their way through the new world of greatly expanded Internet resources. The true revelation will be an OS that relieves us of this tiresome interactivity.
Those of us who regularly check certain sites live for the day when our computer, knowing our habits and tastes, will collect our data for us. And when the PC converges with other infotainment appliances, some sort of intelligent agent will have to sort through the 500 channels for us. Microsoft, maker of 90% of the world's operating systems, is supposed to sit this one out?
Much turns on this question, and "people tell me" is not the most satisfying answer.
The Justice Department, Netscape and Mr. Bork all lay great store by Microsoft internal memos talking about the Netscape threat and "leveraging the operating system." So what?
Just as Bill Gates was slow to appreciate the Web, we can look at these memos today and conclude that Microsoft probably overreacted, as did many others, to claims about how network computing would bury Microsoft's desktop computing. Those who look to massage the real world to fit the antitrust categories draw a sharp distinction between predatorial and efficient responses. Microsoft's was both.
We cite ourselves two years ago taking a more ambivalent view, saying you don't have to believe "the future of computing is a toaster tied to the Internet" to suspect the Web will take "the sting out of the death struggle of the operating systems."
That seems about right today. All the hard lines are being blurred. Intel's forthcoming chip will run Windows and UNIX simultaneously. Windows NT is being engineered to run not just on Intel's chip, but on Macintosh's PowerPC and little orphan Alpha.
Bill Gates has invested $150 million in Apple, and the day probably will come when users will be toggling back and forth between Windows and Mac and UNIX software without being aware that they are engaging different operating systems. As for the stripped-down network computer, who wants one when a fully loaded computer is so cheap?
But primitive fears are always near the surface in times of rapid change, and Netscape folks are the ones nearly hysterical now about the danger of Microsoft "controlling" the Web. Yeah, sure. With GE, Disney and others shelling out for portals, some pretty smart money believes that consumers will have no trouble finding their way to whatever sites interest them.
For our own two cents, we wouldn't be so quick to bury Netscape's browser. It still owns half the corporate market. A smart player with deep pockets could do worse than buy the company or maybe just the browser division. The idea would be to keep upgrading the browser and giving it away free in order to lure users to a package of Web sites.
Judge Bork is a late convert. Even at his original press conference announcing his betrothal to Netscape, he claimed, "I don't think we have come to the point yet where we have to say that [the browser and operating system] can't be integrated."
This seemed a sensible demurer, given the following: "My wife gets on the Internet, but she'll have to teach me about it."
Come last week, he had seen a light from a different source. Netscape's outside counsel, Christine Varney, sat him down in front of a computer and made him browse the Web. Ms. Varney was a member of the Federal Trade Commission, which twice deadlocked on whether to bring an action against Microsoft, before bounding through the revolving door.
None of this sounds any different from any other Washington story, and the paid advocate is an honorable calling, sort of. But any lawyer can ransack the precedents and come up with an ingenious argument for anything. Netscape hired Mr. Bork not because his shingle is notoriously out, but because it notoriously isn't.
He hadn't even been interested in antitrust matters for a while, preferring to worry about the end of civilization. By his own account, it sounds like he was minding his own business when Netscape showed up waving a fee and a passage from his writings.
Good for him, but the real world has a certain sovereignty that ought to be respected. It would be better for that world if Microsoft could get on with building the next operating system.
|
