|
06.13.00
What really needs to be said about the Microsoft breakup.
First, it will not bring back the competitive environment that obtained at the time of the various antitrust violations. It will not bring back Netscape, nor Navigator's market share, nor the many small companies Microsoft ground into dust or swallowed whole. It may bring down the allies of Redmond, such as Citrix, and allow Java to grow into adolescence unmolested, but it cannot restore a moment in history whose time has passed.
Second, it will humble neither Microsoft as it stalls for time, nor Micro nor Soft once the breakup has taken place. Defiance is its corporate tone.
Third, it will not sufficiently caution other Internet Age giants, such as AOL, Cisco, and Sun, who are all very close to the same ethical and legal edge that Microsoft fell from. Hubris knows no temperate behavior, as with teenagers who believe "I'm immortal. It can't happen to me."
And, finally, it will not inhibit the innovation that Microsoft claims it has offered to the many consumers who have been forced to buy its software.
Frankly, Microsoft has never really been much of an innovator. It's hallmark has been the ruthless execution of business strategy rather than vision or innovation. We have to be amused by television commercials in which Bill promises his long-heralded, or should I say long-hyped, voice recognition technology. Kurzweil and Dragon Systems were innovators. Microsoft doesn't even have a product to release.
More likely, the breakup of Microsoft will enhance innovation, freeing smaller, less risk-averse companies to develop their fledgling markets unimpeded by the monster from Redmond.
But the breakup of Microsoft will likely be a long, drawn-out affair, beset by court challenges, possibly to be delayed by as much as three years before it
finally takes effect.
However, it will change the competitive landscape (Actually, it already has.). It will also prevent those same competitive excesses from continuing. And like all punishments, it will grant a measure of validation to the cries of those companies that Microsoft has
abused. We consumers? We eventually will benefit from renewed innovation and a greater range of choice from software and services companies other than Microsoft, but by then someone else will be ripping us off.
Sic transit gloria mundi.
|
