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Friday, November 1, 2002
18:03 - Ooh, what a scary little monopoly!
http://money.cnn.com/2002/11/01/technology/microsoft_remedy/index.htm

 (top) link


So the trial is pretty much finished, then. And, in a far cry from what happened in the good ol' days of Thomas Penfield Jackson (who scared the bejeezus out of Microsoft's lawyers when he interrupted their stream of let's-confuse-the-poor-grayheaded-fogey techno-gibberish with "Counsel, I know what a DLL is"), Judge Kollar-Kotelly (did her parents meet in the registration line at college or something?) has handed out a nice Halloween treat to the obviously harmless little software trust. This was a sentencing, following a conviction. And the sentence?

The approved settlement requires Microsoft to disclose some sensitive technology to its rivals months earlier than the company and the Justice Department had proposed.

That's how a convicted criminal monopoly is punished these days.

Just think, though-- if the states hadn't raised hell, Microsoft's punishment would have been that it would have to give away copies of Windows to schools. For free! Which is about what it costs them! They'd have been punished by being forced to extend their hegemony into the education market at a deep discount beyond what they normally would have had to spend.

Oooh. Thank you, sir, may I please have another?


This result, which pretty effectively throws aside all the states' objections, transmits a clear message: All clear, Bill. You're good to go.


Here's what has really gotten under my skin throughout this whole thing:

Microsoft said it was reviewing the decision.

"The issues in this case are significant, not only for Microsoft but for the industry and consumers," spokesman Vivek Varma said. "We are committed to resolving these issues in a constructive way so that we can focus on long-term growth and innovation for consumers."

Every time there's been some development, some settlement proposal, some advancement of language in the case, Microsoft has been reported to be reviewing the situation. A few days later, they'd invariably come back and say, "Hmm, nope, nope... I don't think this is going to work. See, your Honor, this proposed solution would result in harm to Microsoft, and we can't allow that."

Maybe I'm severely missing something here, but since when the hell does the defendant on trial get to have a say in what punishment is meted out to it? Why does Microsoft get to veto a ruling against it? Why does their opinion matter one miniscule buzzing fuck?

At least the charade is over. It was never the DoJ's goal to dispense any kind of actual justice, not the timely kind, not the kind that would have mattered. Microsoft is way too entrenched in the world's economy and governmental machines by now for anyone to seriously consider touching them with a ten-foot pole. Instead, the idea has been to conduct an insanely long, drawn-out, and ultimately ineffectual public spectacle so as to give the people some sense that something is being done... while the only intent behind it was simply to run out the clock until the original issues upon which the original case was founded are rendered moot by the implacable march of technology.

I'm sure most people don't even know what the original charges were. And when told that it was about Microsoft's embroidering Internet Explorer inextricably into Windows 98 and shouldering aside Netscape, they're caught by surprise. What's Internet Explorer? is the usual reaction. Windows without the built-in web browser? Unthinkable! Yeah, no kidding.

This was never one of Microsoft's more serious crimes, in any case. This was simply a convenient and visible prop to use in order to get the bread-and-circuses tour moving. It always rankled with me that this was the best anybody could do-- not Microsoft's purchasing of IE from Spyglass, with the promise that Spyglass would be reimbursed with a percentage of all sales proceeds (and the omission of Microsoft's intent to give it away free). Not the outright theft of software from STAC, a company whose crown-jewel software was made a part of DOS for years, illegally-- but Microsoft kept the complaint stalled in court for as long as it took for STAC to go bankrupt with legal fees, upon which the disputed software became Microsoft's as spoils of war. Not the criminal negligence in the design of software like IIS, Outlook, and Windows itself, which has resulted in untold damage to companies over the years who stood there while their IT infrastructures crumbled and their servers were breached and their internal networks were flooded with spam and viruses and their mail systems stood inoperative for months on end, secure and confident that they had made the right decision. Nobody ever got fired for buying Microsoft!


But it's all over now, and we know now what the plan was all along.

Keep everybody distracted-- fool 'em into thinking the right thing will be done-- for as long as the illusion can be sustained. And then it'll be too late.



UPDATE: Yeah.



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© Brian Tiemann