How can the living embodiment of all that is good (and quantifiable) arrive at the conclusion that nothing should be done about Microsoft? I am crushed.

• Consumers like Wintel

Jane says "Consumers like Wintel", I assume because the overwhelming majority of them buy computers with Intel chips running the Windows OS. How come they don't buy machines with Linux, or BeOS, or really anything else on them? I assume (from later comments) that Jane's answer would be "network effect" (which I'll come back to). How about that Microsoft would cut off the air supply to any vendor who dared to sell such a thing? It is unreasonable to claim that this threat, and the consequent unavailability of machines without Windows on them, had no effect on the market. Consumers can't buy what isn't available for sale.

Microsoft should disclose their licensing agreements with OEMs, and they should be subject to governmental oversight, since they have demonstrated rather conclusively that they won't play well with others without adult supervision.




• Innovation will stall

Jane also says "Innovation will stall". Before I hurt myself laughing, please suggest which innovations we're talking about. Pay-per-incident support? UCITA? HIPAA-incompatible license agreements? DR-DOS detection and spurious error message generation? Palladium and <scare-quote>trusted</scare-quote> computing? I will opine that Bill Gates' and Microsoft's primary contribution to the computing field is to establish that (a) software is a product and people should expect to pay for it, and (b) computers are unreliable and should be expected to fail early and often. He also helps establish that (c) corporations are evil and rapacious in exactly their capacity to inflict evil and rapine.

I'm all in favor of (a) what with me being a professional software developer, but (b) causes me no end of teeth-gnashing. I've had to reboot my stereo exactly once, and I don't believe I've ever had to reboot my cell phone. I guess my car doesn't count since I can't tell when it reboots, but I've never had to manually start the reboot process to clear up some flaky behavior. If that's the innovation we're talking about, I'd just as soon not have any.

As an aside, has anybody ever actually called Microsoft tech support and gotten any useful information from them? Show of hands please. Note that this doesn't include getting support for Windows from your computer hardware vendor. You must have called Microsoft themselves and gotten satisfaction. I opine that "support from Microsoft" is a useful fiction in the same category as Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny.

I don't think (c) ever actually goes away, but damn me if I can think of an alternative. Transaction costs, after all, are real real real.

I propose no remedy here, since there isn't any objection. Claiming "innovation" is just an appeal to apple pie and Mom-hood. Yes, we all think all the children should have shoes, and as soon as Microsoft comes up with an innovation that people voluntarily purchase, then they should get to sell all they can make of it subject to all the other rules that bind the rest of us.




• Network Effects save companies money

Yes, network effects are real. The network effects would be just as real if there were interoperable products as they are now with the ubiquitous computing monoculture. Unfortunately, Microsoft isn't actually interested in interoperability. Primarily, they are interested in Microsoft-only versions of things, as evidenced by their conduct vis-a-vis Java and Visual J++ and their refusal to abide by licensing agreements that they find inconvenient (ibid). If you really believe that network effects provide a benefit to consumers (which I do, by the bye), then yes, a ubiquitous platform is very desirable but that doens't mean that it must come from a single vendor.

Microsoft should publish their file formats and APIs, and those interfaces should be the only communication between Microsoft OSs and applications, which, coincidentally, is the same rule that the rest of us have to follow if we want to play in the pool.




• Microsoft has a lot of shareholders

I opine that neither the government nor the people of the U.S. have an obligation to re-arrange the game to insure that a company that previously was profitable continues to be so if circumstances change. The investors have already been offered their reward in the form of increased stock prices. I feel strongly that we are not obligated to continue to force their stock price up. After all, Sun has stockholders too, as does (or did, anyway) Enron. Would we also be obligated to keep their stock prices up? I could insert a slippery-slope argument here, but I assume everyone can see what sort of shape it would have. Discuss amongst yourselves, if you wish.

Microsoft's shareholders should have no special standing before the court, or at least no more special than that of us consumers.




• Risk is not good for the economy

First, I'm not entirely sure that risk isn't good for the economy. It seems to me that accepting risk and attempting to mitigate it is the essence of starting a new business; if everybody is fat and sassy then they're unlikely to select you as a vendor. If there's no chance that anything will ever fail to be perfectly wonderful, then you're probably not going to be interesting in buying any new anything.

Second, Microsoft is apparently not shy about letting their customers swing. We've already establish that everybody is their customer, including (unfortunately), the U.S. Navy. What exactly is the risk of having our armed forces left stranded because their increasingly-wired equipment BSODs? What are the risks to the rest of us from having truly astonishing vulnerability to every s|<ript |<iddy who finds the source to a distributed denial of service 'bot? What is the risk to us of current and future variants of Melissa, BugBear, Anna Kournikova, Code Red, etc etc ad nauseam?

Recognize that there are real risks to inaction as well, and that the status quo contains harmful elements.

In short ("too late" I hear you say), Microsoft is not a poster child for the free market. They have acted contrary to their customer's interests on quite a number of occasions. (As I recall, Adam Smith claimed that the invisible hand worked because the vendor, working in his own selfish interest, would improve the position of his customers as well; that doesn't seem to be working here, damn it all) Far too many people are willing to give them a pass for what is truly unconscionable behaviour just because their logo is stamped onto damn near everybody's desk. They have commited harm, and if we wish them to stop harming us then they must suffer some penalty. One of my personal quirks is I refuse to accomodate people doing crap that I don't approve of. If you want to screw me, I will not be assisting you in doing so, and I will do what I reasonably can to make it painful for you. We, as consumers, should be making it painful for Microsoft to work against our interests, and so far the DOJ isn't doing such a fine job of that.