Microsoft

What’s the deal with Microsoft and the DOJ? The deal is that it’s practices are anti-competitive, and there are laws against that. It’s not that people don’t want the new features of IE 4.0, it’s that people ought to have choice. And when Microsoft throws its egregious pockets behind a new technology that mirrors that of another company’s, then gives that technology away, it hurts the market, and, thus, consumer choice. I instigated these thoughts in response to something in Windows NT Magazine. I sent it in, it got accepted, and it’s archived here. I have expanded on those thoughts below.

It’s true that Microsoft is a corporate predator. Whether it’s buying competing technologies, or it’s using its dominance of the desktop to shove aside the first-to-market, it’s the shrewdest company on the planet. What can you say against that? It is most definitely monopolistic in its practices. But at what – exactly – can you point the finger? Is it just well-managed, or is it actually illegally anti-competitive?

Some people say that they get a good OS and application suite for a reasonable price? Huh? Yeah, I’ve kept up, and I’ve been keeping score. Have you? I’ve got… let’s see… $120 for 95, $185 for NT 4.0, $130 (with rebate) for Windows 2000, $400 for Office 97 Pro, $400 (with rebate) for Office 2000 Premium… Um. Uh huh. If you’re buying your software legally, and been in it for any length of time, you’ve easily got over $1000 in Microsoft software. (Then there’s Visual Studio, but that’s a whole ‘nother – expensive – ball of wax!) You call this acceptable? You think these prices don’t reflect predatory monopolistic practices? You’re dreaming.

This is the very heart of the matter: Microsoft feels no incentive to lower their price for a copy of Windows. In fact, it’s gone up steadily in the face of ever-decreasing hardware prices. They say it’s because they include more stuff. Well I want to shell out money for the OS and then go buy my add-ons somewhere else, thank you very much. But if I’ve already spent the money on one copy, why go buy another?

I don’t know what should be done, but something is definitely called for. Breaking up the company? Well, alright, but what about another step further? If you want Microsoft to be held to competitive standards, don’t let them bundle *anything* significant with their products. Break out the defragger and the fax software (along with the browser) from Windows 2000. Then these things could be held up to competition, and we’d really see how well Microsoft has done their job. How many people (I’m one) aren’t paying for the full version of Diskeeper because Microsoft has bundled an un-schedulable version with the OS? (Anyone that thinks they’re getting this free is on drugs.) If I had to buy the stripped down version outside of the OS, I’d opt to pay a little more for the full version. Maybe someone else would skip it entirely and buy Norton Speedisk. The same holds true for fax software. If Microsoft would fairly price and sell their fax software that they’ve included with Windows 2000, how many people would opt to buy WinFax? That’s competition. That’s the kind of thing that needs to be fostered and guaranteed with whatever is finally done with Microsoft as a company.

One thing is certain, I have personally spent my last dime with Microsoft. I counted it up, and I’ve spent over $1100 for their software. That’s enough. I’ve tried the Windows XP beta version, and the only thing to note about it is that Microsoft is yet again rewriting and bundling software that other companies currently sell. Windows XP is poised to kill Easy CD Creator, WinZip, and Rollback. Good grief. Didn’t we learn anything from the trial? Something needs to be done, and as a good friend just suggested to me, perhaps the best thing we could do to hamper Microsoft’s predatory practices and stimulate competition is to have the federal government stop using Microsoft software. I’m voting with what dollars I have.

Update: I originally wrote these thoughts in 1999. I’m updating them in 2010, and my predictions were spot on. Who buys Diskeeper any more? The company is private, so I can’t infer any numbers, but I never heard anyone talking about it in the Windows group at the Fortune 500 company I used to work for. Easy CD Creator? Roxio’s fortunes rose prominently in the interceding years, but it was probably because they struck deals with the OEM’s. For years, it seemed you couldn’t get a computer from Dell without it being on there. The really weird part of their story is that they started taking over the machine, much like Norton Antivirus. The suite became so big and bloated that when the inevitable reinstall happened, people just didn’t put it back on. So while they’ve done well in the stock market, I don’t think anyone’s missing them on the desktop. Winzip? Ninety percent of users just want to unzip something they downloaded, and Windows has had that covered for a long time. I haven’t even heard of a user downloading any sort of compression software for years. Rollback? It looks like it’s still being made, but, again, like Diskeeper, only a tiny fraction of people are going to be interested in it’s advantages over the stuff that Microsoft is bundling.

Now it’s all about antivirus. To be fair, the major antivirus software makers, Norton and McAfee, have it coming in spades. Their suites of software completely take over the computer, making it take an order of magnitude longer to boot, and slowing everything down after that. Even non-technical users know that something is completely wrong with this picture. The bottom line is that modern antivirus makes computers unusable. So people — rather than selectively turn off the realtime “protections” — just uninstall the whole thing. I did. Comcast just offered me a full version for free, and I tried it on my kids’ / wife’s computer. It made the P4-based machine so slow, I took it off within minutes. To address this situation, Microsoft has released Microsoft Security Essentials, and it seems pretty good. I don’t know how well it will protect computers, but it feels good to have something in place, and one that gets out of the way is a must. Time will tell how this works out.