Microsoft Antitrust Oversight Ends 289
dcblogs writes "The US Department of Justice remedies supervision in the Microsoft antitrust case ends Thursday, closing the landmark case, which began in 1998. But the questions posed by trial federal Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson's attempted remedy remain: Did tech innovation suffer over the last 10 years because Microsoft wasn't broken up? 'Not really,' said Vinton Cerf, Google's chief Internet evangelist, 'It has to do with the fact that open source has become such a strong force in the software world.'"
I think we've found a happy place. (Score:4, Interesting)
Apple is big. Arguably the biggest player right now, but it's arguable and that's a good thing.
Microsoft is the has been that isn't forgotten and still wields power.
The previous two are big enough to keep Google from really taking over, and is the only player that has truly embraced what the public wants (though minus the draconian parts Apple does a good job of that too).
Linux is huge, what the public really wants even though the masses aren't smart enough to realize it's what they want. They're happy as long as we spoon feed it to them with Android phones and in embedded devices they use and love while calling Linux that freaking weird hard to use thing their nephew likes.
The technology world is at a happy place. I don't know if smacking Microsoft down with the court system enabled this or not, really I can't guess how things would have worked out without the regulation they got. One of the few things mafia tactics worked on after the break up was making sure mobile music players, especially those in cars, didn't support OGG/Vorbis, but the only reason they succeeded was because Apple was the biggest player and was on the same page without actually having to conspire with Microsoft to do it. I'm certain other software companies were still bullied, but they did keep it on the down low, the PC vendor bullying was put into the spotlight, not fixed, but at least suppressed and lessened.
I think we're finally in a happy place were OS and hardware vendors are concerned.
Now we need to move on to communications companies, deregulation is good, but we need to deregulate enough to allow new competitors to breach the market and we have to stop the big players form bullying local co-ops and count/local level players from building networks where the big guys won't.
Skype Monopoly (Score:5, Interesting)
Microsoft's dominance over the desktop, especially office desktops, still gives it too much monopoly power for Microsoft to compete fairly when combined with Skype's net phone dominance.
Re:When did it actually start? (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, the guy who was a good engineer 40 years ago when he was in the right place at the right time to properly design a fundamental internet protocol that has stayed relevant ever since.
That's why he's a Google evangelist, not a Google engineer.
Besides, I spent all afternoon in his DC office about 5 years ago. He's also a top Google bullshitter. His position on Microsoft's monopoly effect is entirely based on whatever lobbying position Google has taken this week.
He certainly doesn't have indisputable assertion powers.
Controversial issue (Score:5, Interesting)
I find it interesting that because of the ruling MS could no longer dictate that OEMs not put any crapware and couldnt force its own free AV onto them. So end users now get these machines with a fairly decent version of windows, but bogged down in crapware and with multiple AV products screaming for subscriptions which most people ignore.
I'd rather the court just break them up into OS, office, and enterprise software solutions than this kind of odd hand-holding that in the end didn't do much good.
Open Source was going to take over the horrible overly expensive commercial unix market regardless. Apple would still be around and even kept alive by MS to avoid regulators, etc.
Outside of the Netscape issue, I dont think this was justified. I'd rather the court better handle this as its own issue. I'd also would rather have legislation in place that controls whether a large corporation can produce free/bundled software against a small competitor on a case by case basis. We already have undercutting and dumping laws for other industries.
I honestly think that even without this ruling Firefox, Linux, and Apple would have done just as well. The lack of a breakup really just turned this into a useless compromise. Shame the government had the balls to take them to court, but not to actually win anything.
Re:i dont buy any of this (Score:4, Interesting)
There's plenty more of that coming in the next few years...
The shroud of the dark side has fallen. Begun, the IP War has!
Re:Ambiguous (Score:4, Interesting)
Kind of like how Old Spice insinuates that their products will make you smell like a millionaire jet fighter pilot, but don't actually say so. They do, however, state that they're insinuating it—which, all things considered, is more honest than ComputerWorld.
What exactly is the world coming to, anyway?
Re:When did it actually start? (Score:4, Interesting)
Actually, if google opened up its search engine, then result spamming would reach epic proportions. Spammers would know exactly how google ranks sites, and could then game the system to make erection pills show up for every result no matter what you entered.
So I assume Firefox won't work with next patch? (Score:2, Interesting)
Also Embrace, Extend, Extinguish was put on cool down for 10 years. That stuff got really old. Why try to make something useful when Microsoft would just catch wind of it and redo it?
I have no problem with OS bundling though. I bet people have some nice bundles of software ready with Linux. Once multiplatform aps become the rule instead of exception, people won't have a real reason to stick with M$ unless M$ really invests in new technologies. I'd like them to take what they got with Kinect and apply it for all known objects in the world, maybe be the people who solve robotic vision, and let us have robots that can interact in the world safely.
we'll never know (Score:4, Interesting)
so we'll never know. What I think we do know is that Nokia would not be turned into a Windows shop and Skype would not become a Windows company.
LoB
Re:So I assume Firefox won't work with next patch? (Score:4, Interesting)
You still remember that day huh? That's interesting, because it never happened. No google results. Nothing in the conspiracy theory archives. Strange that.
More than likely, you're conflating multiple different events and mixing them up and putting a netscape tag on it. Certainly, updates to Windows have broken apps, but never because they removed a dll. Most apps break when a new OS is released because the apps were relying on some undocumented functionality that changes in an update. It happens on Macs, it happens on Linux, and it happens on Windows.
Microsoft goes out of their way to make broken apps work in Windows, even competitors. Microsoft actually had to put bugs back in the OS to make various apps function properly on some versions of Windows. On Windows 9x systems, there was a file that contained "hack bits" that were used to enable certain processes to turn on compatibility features for them, so they wouldn't break.
Re:Good (Score:4, Interesting)
He's probably referring to the relationship of an OEM who is granted an illegal discount.
On the one hand this company now has fewer market options; in today's market this is a minor inconvenience and often a blessing in disguise; global markets don't favor companies that have a hundred mediocre solutions.
The OEM's advantage to receiving illegal discounts regards how this effects potential competition - if Microsoft or Intel offer the big players half-off for their exclusivity agreements the barrier to entry climbs for small businesses. This can create a situation where an individual will spend more on the components of a computer than the complete product with support agreements from one of these laughing OEMs.
The lucrative situation doesn't make this any less wrong, it still hurts consumers and small businesses alike.