Main Area and Open Discussion > Living Room

Microsoft antitrust farce ends, did it really do anything useful?

(1/3) > >>

Josh:


It's a little over 10 years since Microsoft largely won/lost the appeal of the U.S. government's landmark antitrust case. Today, Thursday, May 12, 2011, the oversight regime created by the judgement against Microsoft ends. Can anyone reasonably say that this case made any meaningful difference to the technology business?

I've always been hardcore, maybe even an extremist, about the antitrust case against Microsoft. I never thought of it as a dangerous monopoly.

Oh sure, Microsoft had absurdly high market share and the company was a bastard to do business with, but everyone, and I mean everyone, who ever bought a Microsoft product had alternatives. They chose to buy the Microsoft product. The products sucked, but all things considered they were better than the alternatives.

The fact that there weren't even more alternatives or that the ones available couldn't compete is due to their deficiencies. Did IBM's OS/2 on the desktop fail because Microsoft wouldn't let any OEMs sell it? It hardly matters, because nobody would have bought it anyway. There were plenty of people who could have bought OS/2 and didn't. I remember those days. I remember OS/2 had a barely functional Netware stack in a business world where Netware really mattered. I remember OS/2 having device drivers for about 3 graphics cards. It was, in many ways, an excellent operating system, but it didn't do what people really needed. Windows 3.1 -- the crappy, unstable, ugly Windows 3.1 -- actually did that better.
--- End quote ---

Source @ Betanews

My question is, did this really do anything for the better? Linux still has a good portion of the server market, Microsoft still owns the remainder and dominates the enterprise desktop market along with the end-user market. The EU anti-trust efforts created the N editions and the browser ballot which remain largely ineffectual.

What good did all of this do?

40hz:
Nothing much came out of it because there wasn't much to be gained to begin with.

Most of the argument was that Microsoft was depriving consumers of choice. The simple fact 90% of the consumers could have cared less what brand of software they used (as long as it worked) somehow seems to have escaped the would-be regulators.

It's nice that the government wanted to open the software market up to encourage more independent development and alternatives. Too bad hardly anybody took them up on it because - wait for it - most consumers and businesses aren't interested in exploring alternatives - even when alternatives are available.

You can't even argue the money angle. If cost were the sole criteria, every business would be running Linux and Libre Office on the desktop and Centos or BSD instead of Win2K8-R2 on their servers.

Dissatisfaction and demand drives the creation of alternatives. So until there's sufficient dissatisfaction with Microsoft's technologies, there won't be much hope for commercial alternatives springing into existence to address it.

And most people are pretty much 'ok' with Microsoft.

 8)

Renegade:
What good did all of this do?
-Josh (May 12, 2011, 10:14 AM)
--- End quote ---

It validated some people's moral indignation. :)

Deozaan:
In which I am the grammar police.The simple fact 90% of the consumers couldn't have cared less-40hz (May 12, 2011, 11:03 AM)
--- End quote ---

Sorry. I couldn't help myself. :-[


And most people are pretty much 'ok' with Microsoft.-40hz (May 12, 2011, 11:03 AM)
--- End quote ---

And the ones who aren't have already moved on to the alternatives.

zridling:
My, how soon we forget. Recall that Microsoft had bundled IE into Windows effectively killing every other browser because IE was free, thus making cost a central issue. That included manipulating its APIs so that IE worked on sites when using the Windows OS when others would not. IE was soon blessed with that wonderfully insecure virus called ActiveX and then promptly stopped the world on IE6 in 2001. Oh, and then there was that whole OEM/licensing thing that still exists today, where even if a big vendor like Dell WANTS to sell you a different OS or a computer without an OS, you still have to pay Microsoft for the privilege of not installing Windows. During the trial, Bill Gates said, "I don't recall" so often that the judge literally laughed out loud.

I call those behaviors simple robbery, not "most people could care less."

How many sites would only run on IE back then? And then when you read Barry Ritholtz' post on how the Venture Capital world waited for Microsoft rather than investing in new, small businesses (of which many were swallowed under Microsoft's "Embrace, Extend, Extinguish" policy), then we all sat around for half a decade waiting on the Vista debacle followed by the MS-OOXML debacle, and that's just software; I won't mention a dozen other failures from Zune to the Kin phone.

Now that people have a choice among net apps, Apple, Linux, etc., I'm pretty sure Apple and Linux users aren't clamoring to return to the days of Windows and MS Office. Many businesses are looking to get away from the same old Microsoft products with the same old Microsoft  license agreements because they cost more than they're worth in time, money, and hassle. As the world goes mobile, Microsoft becomes ever more irrelevant. Sure, buy it and use it if you want, it will get you online and print your letters and papers and spreadsheets.

But so with everyone else.

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page