http://www.mujweb.cz/www/regulace/EB038/Microsoft2.doc

I looked over the document and several things become clear. (I will identify the author(s) as he/his/etc. as there doesn’t seem to be a name provided).

The article you provided is very one sided in its dispersion of the facts and only provide details that supported his view. The antitrust theories and claims to ethical misconduct by Microsoft are questionable. Even if something leaves a bad taste in your mouth, it does not give you the privilege of busting up other people’s property as you see fit. It appears he wrote the article with the thought, ‘Microsoft is guilty’ rather than ‘Is Microsoft innocent, guilty or a combination of both?’

His writing seems to indicate that he believes that law=ethics and so if Microsoft was violating the law, it was being unethical, even if those laws were shoddy. Further, why the constant mention of monopoly everywhere? Why is it not discussed what a monopoly actually is so those reading know exactly what the issue at hand is? His use of select quotes from Microsoft employees often seem truncated and do not reveal the true intent. I do not have time to look at all his sources or their validity.

Also what is rarely explained is how Microsoft goes from the initial ‘embrace’ step to actually getting consumers (corporate or otherwise) to buy enough of their product to give them market power. I am skeptical of punishing a company for entering markets, providing a product that consumers then buy and subsequently punishing them for it. Also, his ‘higher prices’ claim near the end does not hold water, especially when inflation is taken into account. And arguing about release dates or ‘quality’ of a product from select reviewers (many of who have a biased against Microsoft), doesn’t lend credibility to the supposed case against Microsoft.

Further, it is the essence of a monopoly not to be pressure to innovate as much once it has a dominant position, this is not somehow exclusive to Microsoft as the article implies. Of course they (or any other company) will be highly innovative when competition is fierce and stagnant when there is no competition. Look at Apple and the iPod line.

Also, many of his arguments are not valid in that he quickly goes from several propositions to a conclusion which may only be partially supported (high market share->’inferior product’->means OEMs not conforming to consumer demands)
---
Word is a monopoly in terms of market share, but WordPerfect, Open Office, etc. can use .doc and other Word file formats (and in WP's case, is superior in many regards). And unlawful behavior does not mean unethical behavior, especially when the laws are founded on shoddy philosophic and ethical foundations.

Regarding the graphic shown, Word was clearly beating WordPerfect before the alleged ‘scheme’ started to take place in 1994; it appears the trajectory was such that the two productivity suits would have ended up with the same market share regardless.

Also, I and many others I know, chose to switch to Word from WordPerfect not because of some Microsoft pressure or de facto standard issue, but because the product (Word) is in fact better than WordPerfect for many task and its superior integration with Excel and other Office programs is more fluid and productive than Corel's WordPerfect suit of software (Quattro, Presentations, etc.). Microsoft didn’t ‘extinguish’ WordPerfect, and the ‘barrier to entry’ here is made up, as I have continued to be able to use WordPerfect fine up until I decided to switch to Word. Also, Outlook (ignoring its integration features) is very usable and holds up well to other email clients such as Thunderbird. The calendar portion of Outlook leaves some things to be desired though.

What he does not say in his end remarks on how Microsoft’s Office productivity monopoly has hurt consumers is that Word 2007 can still save files in old standards and can even load competing products proprietary file-types, such as WordPerfect, quite smoothly. Also, a lack of major software releases ignores SPs or other incremental changes or the nature of Office productivity, which at its core the purpose for doesn’t change that much.
---
If the author(s?) had taken an econ class, he would know that monopolies or companies with market power have different methods of calculating supply and price than companies in a competitive environment or who have to take the price as given. While this can create dead-weight loss for society, it does not necessarily mean that we would be better off wasting so many resources prosecuting Microsoft and causing it to be unproductive by altering its products and constantly having the court-battle money drain. Further, it seems that the actual costs to consumers are never calculated (including benefits), only hypothetical constructs and ‘fairness’ claims.

---
The IBM case is also frivolous. IBM was directly competing with the product Microsoft was supplying them. Thus, discriminatory pricing is not unethical, it is merely illustrating to IBM that they cost more for Microsoft since they are potentially taking away from Microsoft’s sales.

The Sun case is not accurately reported by the article, especially in light of the fact that it was Sun who ended up not renewing its license with Microsoft and thus not allowing Microsoft to bundle it with Windows versions such as XP.

The 'per processor fee' antitrust case holds no water. If the OEMs really wanted to, they would have come together as a group and pressure Microsoft into not including this clause. Without hardware OEMs, Windows would have no market (Microsoft wasn't much of a hardware producer). Further, how is this contractual arrangement, which both parties agree upon, somehow unethical and why should a third party get involved? They weren’t agreeing to gang up and force Apple to pay Microsoft fees. Notice it was the US DOJ that filed the suit, not the OEMs.
---
The ‘barrier to entry’ should not be construed as it is ‘harder’ to enter the industry, which is you need to release a substantially better product and have the PR to make the public aware (or hence all companies in such R&D heavy industries as pharmaceuticals would be brought to court for the extremely high barrier to entry inherent in that business, partially created by the monopoly granting patents the government awards). It should be seen as some sort of physical barrier to entry, something that on a true market without government intervention here and there (which is enforced by force), would not happen as it would make forceful action against another individual(s), which has ethical grounds for punishment.

The article doesn't give enough solid evidence of actual wording or ‘fear, uncertainty, and doubt’ spread by Microsoft. The fact was, Microsoft had built Windows to start being incompatible with DR-DOS (or other parts of its OS to be incompatible with other products). It's their own product, they can choose to use a competitor’s product or not.

The 'integrated' or 'tying' issue is moot. There are many features in Windows that are bundled which threaten a certain niche markets (Windows Defender, Explorer, VPN, Backup and Restore, Defrag, etc.), but including things like better security software, a browser, a media player in Microsoft's own product is to the benefit of consumers, competitors must develop a much better product in order to cause consumers to switch over and they must make it cheaper in order to compete.

Further, Microsoft has been lowering the price on its OSs, since when you take into account inflation, the $299 price tag of XP Pro vs. Vista business means that Vista cost less (to buy) and you get more (I will not go into the XP vs. Vista debate, this is about price). It has been seen that Microsoft enters industries and consequently the prices in those industries drop as companies try to compete with Microsoft (who often offers their product for less than the going price), a boon for consumers.
---
Regarding Microsoft and Netscape see the article attached at the beginning of this post. What the article does not note is that Microsoft gave away IE for free, incurring a loss on itself, and forcing Netscape to lower the price on its browser (to corporate), a benefit to consumers. Further, their strategy to tweak Internet standards never worked, as is evident by various IE versions not displaying websites that are W3C certified to have correct CSS and HTML formatting. What is interesting is that he never talks about Netscape’s monopoly on the browser market until Microsoft entered and Netscape being tied into other OSs.

Also, the 'network effect', which is apparent with Windows and Word, is something most companies (ala Google (search), Apple (iTunes+iPod), Facebook (social networking) and others) seek for certain types of consumer products that become more useful once more people are on their network. Furthermore, while Apple and Linux distros have a minority market share, for those who want to, it is not that hard to switch to them, especially now that Macs can dual boot quite easily. Though there are for some corporate users a high cost to migrate fully from Windows to OSX or another OS.

The strategy of beating its competition (through the 'embrace, extend, extinguish' strategy) is not straight up unethical as the article claims and does not spend enough time looking at the merits of the strategy.
---
‘Microsoft apologist’ is not really needed; don't give people labels. Is there a purpose to giving me a label then making an underhanded insult with it? It does not belong.

I am question the ethical conduct of the Justice Department and the EU. Antitrust laws are taken by many as a given, not many people question whether they are actually hurting society should a cost-benefit analysis be done.

Furthermore, what is the purpose of this question 'When was that announced again? And when will it be available for everyone to purchase?'? Go look it up if you care to know and then make a statement regarding it, don't ask ambiguous questions meant as hidden attacks.

And ‘You must live in some alternate reality,’ is neither helpful nor true. Stop with the personal attacks.

Thank you if you got this far.

http://www.aynrand.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=5274
http://blog.mises.org/archives/005656.asp
http://www.mises.org/article.aspx?Id=419&FS=+Break+Up+Microsoft?
http://www-hsc.usc.edu/~mbernste/tae.ethics&law.herrera.html
http://www.scu.edu/ethics/practicing/decision/framework.html

How I wish! No, I provide this service pro bono. It's not my fault that the Sony and Nintendo PR machines are so inept at countering Microsoft's FUD.