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PERSPECTIVE
ON MICROSOFT
The Goose With the Golden Egg Is Being Led to Slaughter.
Innovation and creativity have put the software maker
on top.
Now bureaucrats and lawyers want to cash in.
LOS ANGELES TIMES, May 20, 1998
By
James V. DeLong
After
months of mobilizing, the government and 20 states have
charged Microsoft with antitrust violations. In the
near distance, moving up to the sound of the guns, are
the legions of the Trail Lawyers of America, hoping
to increase their tobacco loot by collecting treble
damages from Microsoft for any loss incurred by any
software startup over the past 10 years.
The
fog of war already is obscuring the battlefield, only
here it is made of over-simplifications and bad metaphors
instead of cannon smoke. Joel Klein, head of the Justice
Department's antitrust division, says that Microsoft's
practice of bundling its net browser with the Windows
operating system is like a manufacturer of compact disc
players insisting that people buy only its own brand
CDs. Microsoft says that what the government wants it
to do, which is to ship a competing browser with the
operating system, is like requiring Coke to add three
cans of Pepsi to every six-pack. Neither image is totally
wrong, but both need hedging with so many additional
facts that they are essentially useless.
The
real stakes are competing visions of the future of the
software industry. The government thinks that Microsoft's
Windows should continue its dominance as the operating
system of choice for PCs. Only it should be frozen in
time, containing only those features included as of,
when--1995? Maybe roll it back to 1989? Well, we'll
work that out. Windows should then be made into a common
carrier. Like a bus or a train, it should be forced
to accept any software product that any developer wants
to hitch onto it, and it should not be allowed to add
any feature that might compete with any of these.
Microsoft
Chairman Bill Gates has a different vision. It is: Who
knows what will happen? Apple had a vision of total
control of machine and software, rather like Klein's
metaphor of the CD maker. It reaped monopoly profits
for a time, then cratered. Gates had a vision of an
open architecture that tapped the creativity of multiple
software makers and of an operating system that would
keep expanding as the capability of PCs grew.
Gates'
vision is truer, so far, but maybe the future will be
different. People are always complaining about Windows,
so surely someone can build a better system. Most of
Microsoft's vaunted "monopoly" is that it
keeps Windows too cheap for anyone too bother, but Linux,
OS/2, Unix, and others are waiting. Maybe we will have
multiple operating systems, multiple applications, and
a middle layer of system integrators. Or we might have
a few competitors marketing fully integrated suites
-- operating system, word processor, spreadsheet, browser,
tax forms, graphics, all in one seamless package. Maybe
it will be some combination of these visions, or something
else entirely, based on Java or the Internet.
The
point is, no one knows--not Gates and not Klein. But
Gates at least knows he does not know. The history of
the computer industry makes clear that he was constantly
getting surprised. In the early 1980's, he did not anticipate
the power that would accrue to the owner of the operating
system for the IBM PC; he resisted taking the project
on, even as IBM fought to give it to him. Later, IBM's
failure to work with Microsoft to develop OS/2 as an
alternative to DOS was a shock, and so was the lack
of interest in writing for Windows by such dominant
application makers as WordPerfect and Lotus.
In
the mid-90's, the wild growth of the Internet brought
him up short, and could easily have broken Microsoft.
Gates is worth decabillions in part because he had a
few big visions, such as the basic tide of growth in
PCs and the creative power of open standards, but equally
important has been his embrace of the fluidity of the
future and an awesome ability to react to surprises.
This is the opposite of the bureaucratic mind, which
cannot stand uncertainty and fluidity, and so makes
the future predictable by stifling it.
So
go to it, Gates. However unwillingly, you have been
drafted as the champion of those of us who do not want
our technology or our lives micromanaged by a committee
composed of antitrust division bureaucrats, Al Gore,
20 state Attorneys General drooling for governorships,
the vultures of the plaintiffs' bar, and all those businessmen
who would rather buy the government with campaign contributions
than get out and compete. The odds aren't with you--or
with us. But it's a great cause.
JAMES V. DeLONG
Washington
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