Time: Mon Dec 15 08:12:55 1997
To:
From: Paul Andrew Mitchell [address in tool bar]
Subject: SLS: Questions are growing about Microsoft's power and arrogance
Cc:
Bcc: sls
References:
<snip>
>
>Some of my favorite comments come from this man.
>
>Questions are growing about Microsoft's power and
> arrogance - and the quality of its products
> by William Rees Moog
> London Times
>
> Is Bill Gates really selling us all Ladas?
>
> Microsoft has developed the most powerful monopoly in
> human history, even more powerful than the monopoly
> John D. Rockefeller built in Standard Oil. This is proving
> to be the year in which the public attitude to Microsoft has
> changed. Last January Bill Gates was still generally seen
> as a benefactor of mankind, who had developed new and
> efficient software to spread the advance of electronic
> communications. Now, this December, Mr Gates is
> widely seen as a systematic monopolist of communication
> software who is exploiting the information age. Microsoft
> is viewed as greedy, not over-competent, manipulative
> and arrogant. It is thought to be charging too much for
> software which is still far from being user-friendly. His
> critics attack Bill Gates, as their critics attacked the old
> monopolists, as a "malefactor of great wealth".
>
> The degree of monopoly is not in doubt. Microsoft
> provides the software for more than 90 per cent of
> personal computers and for 80 per cent of
> word-processing. Some 80 per cent of computers use
> Windows 95. Next year Microsoft planned to launch
> Windows 98, which was intended to include an "Internet
> Explorer" facility. If that does go ahead, the Microsoft
> monopoly could well be extended to the Internet. A world
> monopoly in communication software would give
> awesome power and be extremely profitable.
>
> Microsoft competitors, and the American Government,
> allege that Microsoft uses its power to lock out
> competitors. Last week there was a crucial judgment in
> the American courts which went against Microsoft. The
> issue arose out of Microsoft's consent agreement with the
> US Government in 1995 that it would not seek to extend
> its monopoly by putting Internet browsing software in a
> single package with Windows 95. This could have
> resulted in the 80 per cent of users who have Windows
> 95 also automatically having a Microsoft connection for
> browsing on the Internet. The main loser would have been
> Netscape Communications, Microsoft's main competitor
> in this part of the market.
>
> Microsoft did not directly break the consent decree; it
> thought it had found a way around it. The company made
> the purchase of Windows 95 conditional on taking
> Microsoft's Internet browsing software as well. The US
> Government objected, and last week, in a preliminary
> hearing, the judge upheld the Government's position.
>
> The United States has a long history of hostility to
> business monopolies; a series of big monopolies have
> been reduced or broken up. The Supreme Court in 1911
> dissolved the original Standard Oil Company into a
> number of big but separate companies. After the Second
> World War, American Telephone and Telegraph was
> similarly broken up into regional companies and IBM,
> which had a monopoly position in computer hardware,
> had to sign a consent decree after litigation in the 1980s.
> The precedents under American law are that Microsoft
> will not be allowed to expand, or even retain, its present
> degree of monopoly.
>
> Public opinion has historically been the decisive factor in
> forcing the break-up of American monopolies. It was
> President Theodore Roosevelt who called the anti-trust
> journalists "muckrakers", but they did their job. In his later
> years, John D. Rockefeller, the greatest individual
> monopolist before Bill Gates, went for advice to a public
> relations firm, and took to giving out dimes to children in
> the street in order to soften his image as a hard-hearted
> businessman. He also became a philanthropist on a large
> scale. He may have become personally more popular, but
> the idea of monopoly did not.
>
> There is already a lively anti-Microsoft campaign, though
> so far it has largely been expressed in the independent
> rather than the American establishment press. On the
> Internet itself there are Websites devoted to criticising
> Microsoft; there are also samizdat anti-Microsoft sheets,
> which are photocopied and passed from hand to hand.
> Now something new is happening. Businessmen, both in
> the United States and Britain, are reviewing the results of
> their own investment in information technology, and many
> of them are not liking what they see.
>
> In the early 1990s many UK businesses developed an
> innocent faith in investment in information technology. The
> board decided what the needs were, consultants came in
> and made recommendations, the board approved them as
> an item of capital expenditure, the hardware and software
> were installed. Big improvements in efficiency and savings
> of staff were expected, as was a large increase in profits
> as a return on the IT investment. Unfortunately, things did
> not work out like that for most businesses, at any stage of
> the process.
>
> Most senior managers now at board level have only a
> superficial understanding of information technology;
> boards are bad at deciding what they need; consultants
> are expensive, hard to monitor, and of variable quality;
> their recommendations are often inappropriate to the real
> needs of the business; the technology and software
> seldom deliver what the consultants have promised, and
> always cost more than the boards have budgeted for; the
> IT systems need to be updated continuously; the
> once-for-all capital expenditure turns out to be an annual
> commitment, tending to rise year after year; the
> improvement in efficiency is less than has been forecast,
> and staff savings are much less - indeed, sometimes staff
> numbers actually rise; profit gains are much smaller and
> the IT investment is much bigger than the board hoped
> for; instead of being a profitable investment, IT turns out
> to be a running cost.
>
> Boards blame everybody, including particularly the
> consultants, and sometimes even themselves. But most of
> all they blame Microsoft, which is a monopoly for much of
> the software and seems to be getting rich while failing to
> deliver the goods. The boards want a normal suppliers'
> choice of simple and reliable software, which does all that
> is asked of it, allows real savings to be made, does not
> cost too much, and does not have to be changed too
> often. No doubt that is what Microsoft or its successors
> will be providing in a generation's time, but it is certainly
> not what businesses have been getting in the 1990s.
> Microsoft, in monopolising a world of profit, has also
> monopolised a world of blame. It is rather as though an
> automobile company were the sole world supplier of cars,
> priced them at the Mercedes level, built in obsolescence
> so that every owner had to buy a new one every year, and
> actually sold Ladas.
>
> The next litigation is going to be equally important. It
> concerns Microsoft's use of the computer language Java,
> which can provide comparability between Windows 95
> and other computer software. Java would undermine
> Microsoft's Windows monopoly and Microsoft has been
> trying to avoid that. Sun Microsystems, which developed
> Java, is trying to force Microsoft to operate according to
> what it believes to be the contract. Of course, Microsoft
> has the reply, and is even counter-suing. My belief is that
> the American hatred of monopoly, which dates at least
> from the 1880s, will prevail. The best advice one can offer
> Bill Gates is to start handing out money to children; I
> know he will need to offer them dollar bills rather than
> dimes.
>
>
>Respectfully,
>Nick Ashton
>The American Agenda
>Web Site. http://www.americanagenda.com
>
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