RE: Microsoft's compelled speech, compelled marketing

["Paul Spirito" <berezina@qed.net>]

Declan,

All of your examples are of antitrust actions *stopped* by political pressure. Of course, monopolies tend to have lots of cash, & that buys influence -- but this is just one more reason to bust them: the disproportion in economic power within the industry corrupts the political system.

There are plenty of ways government fucks with commerce & harms competition. I've seen little evidence that monopoly-busting has done anything but promote competition -- on the rare occasions it succeeds. & the less-rare occasions when the threat influences behavior.

Unlike Lizard, I'm genuinely self-interested. I'd hate to see what would become of the computer industry if Microsoft had no fear of the DoJ.

Paul

P.S.
James & the Naderites ought to take a closer look at MS's Win98 strategy. IE4 is genuinely integrated into the OS, & new MS apps (e.g. Outlook 98) will share much of its code. This isn't bad in itself -- they launch quickly & run smoothly -- but it gives third-party developers a choice:

1) Also live off the IE4 code, making it nearly impossible to port your app to another OS.
2) Write independently & fight with the MS code for system resources. It can't be turned off.

It also makes running Navigator, in particular, ridiculous. You open a folder & bam! there's IE4. Netscape is right to focus on the backend.

P.P.S.
Despite all that, I don't support breaking up MS. The industry is too in flux. MS isn't able to assure victory.