You know, you could take that to mean Microsoft vs. the US government, or take it to mean Microsoft vs. all of US who are using their software.
I've heard some use the argument, what's the problem, they make good product for good prices? So does Saturn, but they aren't busy trying to crowd Ford, GM, Chrysler and the rest out of the market. Microsoft has really taken off since they've released the Win9x/Office combo punch. Not that they weren't bloated before, but they didn't really start torpedoing the competition until then. Why is that? Could it be than other packages just didn't seem to work quite as well with Windows as Office did? Maybe huge price breaks to builders to put Office and Win9x on new machines? Threats? Preemptive, premature announcements?
Bill Gates says that breaking up Microsoft will only harm the software industry. That's true, only if you consider Microsoft to be THE software industry. You know what I think has old Bill quivering? It's not the Internet -- Oh sure, he found he couldn't buy it, but he's managed to buy as much of it as he could. I can remember when Hotmail and Link Exchange were they're own unique entities, providing a useful service and doing it well. Now that MSN is flying over Hotmail, performance crawls to virtual stops at times. I had an e-mail account disappear on me. And imagine my surprise when the newly crowned MSN B-Central (formerly link exchange) started using my page to advertise homosexual pages!! It took me far to long to figure out how to stop that. And as far as your personal desktop machine goes, have you ever tried to remove the IE whatever components from your system? I have machines in the garage that will never see the Internet, but I have space tied up with an old copy of IE3 on each of them. And why was it so difficult to get Win98se to look like my old Win95 setup?? I don't want my machine to look like a webpage. And don't ever feed a hand coded image map into Frontpage -- what you get back is almost certainly guaranteed to screw up in Netscape.
What has Bill worried is Corel. He already sucker punched IBM (screwed them might be a better word). Stealing the thunder from OS/2 Warp by prematurely announcing Win95's release was a master stroke. Even though Warp was an upgrade to a reasonably stable (and already fully 32 bit) OS/2 version 2, and it was available -- people kept hoping for Win95 -- even as the release date got pushed back farther and farther. Had Warp gotten a chance to get a foothold, and as a result -- software written for it -- it could have given Microsoft problems. No, he's scared of Linux, because everyone is writing for Linux but Microsoft. For far less than the cost of Winxx and Office, you can get a nice Corel package with a reasonably easy to setup Linux, and the WordPerfect Office suite -- that won't need 128meg of ram, to run in, or 2.4 gig of hard drive space to use it with, and will run acceptably on an old 486 you still have in storage. They're porting games over to it. Intel is threatening to build machines running it. If people discover that other operating systems are worth using, then people might start switching to things like BeOS -- heaven forbid, IBM might even be persuaded to revive OS/2 and outfit it with a new version of LotusSuite!!
Bill says Microsoft can't function without the two product lines linked -- as if no one else makes productivity software without their own OS. Mac's have taken such a beating from Microsoft over the years they bend over backwards just to keep MS writing Mac office software -- because Apple doesn't anymore. LotusSuite, WordPerfect Office, Sun Office -- all written to run on someone else's OS. Without using the hidden, undocumented program calls that MS Office has been using all along. Really, Microsoft needs to be taken down to:
Operating Systems -- Windows, plain
enough.
User Software -- Office, MS Home, Game stuff
Internet -- IE, Outlook, Front Page(let the other division rewrite publisher),
and especially MSN
Hardware -- keyboards, mice, joysticks, Xbox's, heck, let them make their own
PC's now
Of course, whether or not these divisions could survive on their own against unfettered competition is the question. Oh sure, Microsoft hardware is nice, but could an MSPC compete with Gateway and Dell on a level playing field? Will the Xbox get off the ground against the DC and PS2 without the mighty bulk of a united Microsoft? Is MSN established enough to survive AOL, without the $400 bribe currently being offered to sign up? Word used to be an also ran in the word-processing race, same with Excel -- would the race even out again if Office is less entrenched into Winxx.
It's a real good bet your c:\Windows\System folder would be a whole lot smaller...