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Software outlaw roams the streets! | page 1, 2
Jackson's ruling makes explicit something astute observers have long
understood: That Microsoft's victory in the browser war was a negative
achievement -- it prematurely shut down certain avenues of computing's
evolution before they had a chance to emerge. Microsoft wanted to make sure
that the Web browser did not become a useful applications platform that
might challenge aspects of its operating system monopoly. Maybe the Web browser, for a variety of technical reasons, wouldn't have
proven a very good platform anyway; but Microsoft made sure we wouldn't
have the chance to see for ourselves. By weaving the browser into its own
operating system, it wasn't "innovating," but rather choking off the
potential innovations of others. All that said, anyone trying to view the Microsoft trial with some kind of
balance must remain torn between two valid perspectives: On the one hand,
Microsoft has behaved like a predatory monopolist and probably
deserves to have the full weight of antitrust law land with a kick on its
arrogant posterior. On the other hand, the technology market does
move so fast that every couple of years there is, as Bill Gates is
constantly reminding us and his own troops, a new challenge to Microsoft's
dominance. Yesterday, Netscape; tomorrow, Linux? Some commentators have placed great weight on the possibility that
Microsoft, in the wake of the "findings of law" ruling, may now find itself
dealing with a vast number of distracting private lawsuits based on its
new, confirmed legal status as monopolist. But the ultimate significance of
this week's failed settlement talks and harsh judicial ruling may well lie
in Microsoft's ability to fight more rounds of its market-dominance game
before its legal rope runs out. In the past, the company has trounced its opponents, one after another --
from the pre-DOS operating system CP/M to IBM and Apple to its competitors
in the office suite market to Netscape. With each victory, Microsoft has,
to adopt its own favored verbs, "embraced" new markets and "extended" its
sway -- from command-line operating systems to graphical operating systems
to office productivity software to Web browsers, its hegemony keeps
widening. Now the next wave of competitors looms: Handheld devices are a
platform Microsoft does not yet control; the server marketplace is hotly
contested; electronic commerce remains a wide-open field. As long as the antitrust case is wending its way through the courts, and
whatever happens at the end of that road -- whether the appeals judges
exonerate the company or the government succeeds in busting it up --
Microsoft will have years more to fight these battles. How many more markets will be "embraced and extended" into Microsoft
fiefdoms by the time the courts have finished their work? And how can any
ultimate remedy -- even a breakup of Microsoft -- make up for the
innovations lost and the choices foreclosed?
- - - - - - - - - - - - Table Talk Sound off Related Salon stories "It reads like a novel" Judge Jackson's findings are music to prosecutors' ears -- but Microsoft says it's guilty of nothing more than embodying "the most basic American values." Do the paranoid survive? Judge Jackson's opus on the browser wars portrays a Microsoft terrified by middleware. Tipping the antitrust scales How the right made the federal courts safe for Microsoft.
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