Where will you let us go today, Microsoft?
How to bust a monopoly single-handedlyBy: The Designer | 04Oct1998
1 of 2: The Problem
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Let's get one thing out in the open here: Monopolies, per se, are not evil. When a business manufactures goods or provides services that consumers want, consumers buy. If the business becomes so efficient that they can and do offer the product at a higher quality and lower price than anybody else, consumers go to them. Patents might seem to reduce competition, but actually they encourage new ideas. What would be the point of being creative (except the self-satisfaction) if any imbecile could come along and gain the same benefits from your painstaking work as you do? Patent law enforces the common-sense rule that ideas are property, potentially more valuable than real estate. When a product or service becomes so popular that the monopoly begins taking advantage of their position, there will always be another ambitious entrepreneur in a lab or basement, nurturing his or her own dream.
As long as there is no force, threat of force or fraud involved in establishing and maintaining a monopoly, potential competitors who are not aggressive (or smart) enough have the right to whine, but they have no right to ask government (with its monopoly on force, threat and fraud) to help them accomplish what they cannot by themselves. That's the theory. Haplessly, the reality is more complicated. Power corrupts. Big money opens even bigger doors. Those who find themselves on top of the game will frequently bend or break the rules to stay on top. Add influence peddling (being part of the monopoly on force is inherently corrupting) and the reality is that few monopolies exist for long by their own virtues alone.
First Choice was easy to use, but devoid of fancy formatting options. Geoworks was sweet, but under-supported. When my needs increased, I bought what I could find software to work with -- Windows 3.0. By the time of my next beige box purchase, everything in my price range had Windows preinstalled. (Amigas were too rare to fool with. Macs were prohibitively priced.) PCs had moved from hovel to flat to chateau; the cornice was engraved with the word 'Microsoft'. As long as it was a benevolent dictatorship, why should I care? I didn't begin to suspect Microsoft's strong-armed business practices until I took a job with a computer manufacturer. Does anybody remember Microsoft Bob? MS Bob was a cartoonish front end for Window 3.1 designed to make computers less threatening to children and the technologically bewildered. (They've used the same interface for that annoying talking paperclip on the new version of MS Office.) It was bloated and buggy. Engineering hated it for all the problems it created when we installed it. At the same time, Sales pushed Bob to customers like it was grain in a North Korean grocery store. "Why?" I asked. I was told that if we didn't sell X number of Bob, we wouldn't get the best price on some new earth-shattering OS that was coming. That OS was Chicago, a.k.a. Windows 95. It's entirely likely that I'm ingenuous concerning the practices of big business. Perhaps it's normal for one to require another to hawk a ton of maggot-ridden feces to people -- one chunk at a time -- before giving them the volume price on sweet rolls. Still, it didn't seem right at the time. It couldn't have happened if Microsoft wasn't so well placed in the industry that we had to play Monica-under-the-desk to Bill ... Gates, in this case. That was neither the first nor last time that the monopoly exerted its unmistakable influence in our factory. Around 1995, somebody at Microsoft discovered the Internet. By late 1996, their web browser, Internet Explorer, had less than 6% of the market share. Netscape's browser had around 80% (a virtual monopoly). On 24Feb97, a Microsoft executive wrote: "It seems clear that it will be very hard to increase browser market share on the merits of IE 4 alone. It will be more important to leverage the OS asset to make people use IE instead of navigator." Abruptly, PC makers (including us) were required to license and preinstall Internet Explorer as a condition of licensing Win95.
My company's experience was probably typical -- expect we weren't even trying to remove Internet Explorer. We were installing a Internet bundle from Sprynet, which included Microsoft's browser. We asked Microsoft's permission to remove the copy of IE made redundant by Sprynet. Microsoft said "Nope!" End of discussion. Having felt humiliated over our earlier bowing and scraping, I got a throbbing hard-on when my company -- along with several others -- appeared to grow a big brass pair, in the name of truth and nobility. One of our managers told the brazen truth to the DOJ about Microsoft's de facto control over our company. Unfortunately, our flaccid CEO (not the current one) played jailhouse punk to BGates & Co. There was a lot of stir in the press about the computer companies that were taking a stand, so he issued a statement greatly downplaying the issue raised by "low-level" employees. Does any of this matter to end users? MS Bob was a genuine bloated turd -- but that was some time ago. Maybe there isn't much perceptible difference (to users) between Internet Explorer and Netscape. One comes with new PCs; the other is pre-installed only at the risk of the evil eye of Gates. In spite of the despotic treatment by one business on others AND the spurious "grassroots" letter writing campaign AND the can't-compete-so-we'll-leverage marketing victories, isn't all this just a matter of one thug wailing on other thugs -- crimes among criminals, so to speak? On the whole, aren't those who own Microsoft software (regardless of whether they have a choice) getting the best products on the market? Maybe not. For years, the standard word processor in business offices everywhere was WordPerfect. End users -- especially secretaries -- loved it (and still do). In the average office, however, the user is not usually the person making decisions about how to spend the budget. New computers are eventually procured. Since it's less expensive to buy software on a system than separately, they are preloaded with Microsoft Office. Someone sets the new system in front of a secretary who has lived with WordPerfect forever, and if they complain, the usual answer is "Why throw perfectly good money at new word processing software when your new system came with some?" Since Microsoft leveraged their OS to get people to use their office bundle (sound familiar?) some end users don't have a choice. As of four or five years ago, Microsoft Word gained the majority market share over WordPerfect. Ask any administrative assistant who has used both extensively which s/he prefers and which s/he uses now. Then come to your own conclusions. Ask anybody who designs for the W3 how they like re-coding JavaScript so it will work with the IE browser. Microsoft introduced deliberate disparities between traditional JavaScript -- which was around before Microsoft even gave a damn about the Web -- and their JScript. Decide for yourself if it is ethical for the preeminent PC OS company to introduce new standards (not improved, just different) and raise havoc in an attempt to own the Web. Whether we like it or not, it appears that we are stuck with Microsoft in the office, at home and on the Web in the future, right? No, not necessarily. |
