Is This the Start of Microsoft Anti-Trust 2.0?

Although it probably seems like impossibly-distant ancient history to most people now, the Microsoft anti-trust case was pretty exciting stuff at the time.

Highlights included Larry Lessig being made Special Master to the court and Microsoft objecting (sadly, it eventually got Lessig taken off the case.) The judge's final “remedy” was to split up Microsoft into two parts: one for operating systems, the other for everything else. Then we had a change of US government, and a much watered-down final settlement that did nothing of the kind.

On Open Enterprise blog.

Microsoft, Browsers and Bundling

It's déjà vu all over again:

Opera Software has filed an antitrust suit against Microsoft in the European Union, accusing it of stifling competition by tying its Internet Explorer web browser to Windows.

The complaint, which was filed by the Norwegian firm with the European Commission yesterday, says Microsoft is abusing its dominant position in the desktop PC market by offering only Internet Explorer as a standard part of Windows, and hindering interoperability by not following accepted standards with IE.

Opera is asking the Commission, the executive branch of the European Union, to force Microsoft to unbundle IE from Windows, or include other browsers as a standard part of its operating system. It also wants it to require Microsoft to adhere to industry standards with its Web browser.

It didn't do any good last time, but this is the EU rather than the US, so it will be interesting compare and contrast the outcomes. Still, I have to say that the real solution is not to file this kind of anti-trust suit, but to deploy Firefox. Obviously, that's not an option for Opera, which may explain why they've taken this route.

The Answer to Microsoft's Wrong Question

Here's an interesting question, posed by a Microsoft lawyer called Horatio Gutierrez to James Governor:

“If Microsoft can’t bundle an audio player with Windows, why can Nokia bundle a camera with a phone?”

It's interesting because it lays bare the fallacy at the heart of Microsoft's arguments against the current EU anti-trust action, which it claims are a brake on "innovation". It treats the addition of the Windows Media Player as if it were just another feature, like a camera added to a mobile. But it's not.

When Microsoft bundles WMP, it effectively establishes its own proprietary multimedia standards, because of Windows' dominance. When Nokia adds a camera, it is simply offering the same as everyone else - there are no new standards involved. This is what Microsoft conveniently forgets: that everything it produces is proprietary - and that this is problem here, just as it was with Internet Explorer.

To see this, consider the case of Microsoft bundling a standards-based media player - supporting MP3, and OGG, say. See? There's no problem - it's like adding, say, a standards-based camera to a phone. Just like Nokia does.