perspective (Score 3)

I agree with a lot of it. Corporations grow to fill whatever container they are in. This process breaks down in at least two ways - when they have such a large share of the market that they can artificially manipulate the market, and when the public is too apathetic/ignorant to make good choices.

Its better to not look at this from a moral standpoint. M$ has a clear history of not playing nice with other software and systems, and only do so when market demand forces them to. However, this is their right. Do we really want the government mandating exactly how software should be designed?

The browser integration was a poor issue to use as a major point in the case. Its M$'s decision to integrate it. We in the UNIX world prefer a modular design. M$ does not, and any programmer can see that the integration _does_ offer some benefits, at the expense of other things. M$ has the right to choose this approach.

However, the real problems in my mind are:

MS has practically never "invented" anything. Every core idea was copied, stolen, or bought from someone else. Their innovations have been small asides amidst a vast sea of other companies/peoples ideas

MS shuts people out of the market. I don't know where the line is. If I owned a commercial software company, I would see great benefit in working with a Dell/Gateway like company and selling my software more cheaply in the interest of more sales. However at some point MS became more of a bully, making it difficult for these companies to NOT sell MS software. I'm not familiar enough with the laws to explain where the line is, but practices like this clearly harmed consumers, who had to pay for this software whether they wanted it or not.

Its also clear that MS has taken specific steps to hamper other companies software from working well on their systems. This to me is a fairly clear line. Its one thing for MS to take advantage of the fact that they make the OS and the software in order to design things well; this is their right. Its another to take effort to break other peoples software.

What MS calls "innovation" is really a combination of vast resources to quickly buy or copy other peoples ideas, and a huge market share to compensate for shortcoming in their software.

I hear repeatedly about all the things MS has given us, the boost they gave our economy, etc. If they were making all these innovations themselves, perhaps this would be the case. Its not. The wealth and economic push MS has been a part of is taken at the expense of all the other companies that could be part of the market but are shut out.

Perhaps you look at your windows environment and think, "Look at all they have given us". Instead, look at it and imagine all the superior products which could not suceed due to MS bullying resellers or sabatoging developers.

I don't know where to draw the lines or what the consequences should be, but it is clear that they have harmed consumers and hampered innovation.

The better solution would be a more enlightened public, but the technology can be hard for the average person to understand, and the lack of interoperability can make it hard for consumers to choose non-MS software. This is really the core of MS's talent - getting themselves in a position of doing little original work and having consumers buy it up. This market setup, just like MSs other "innovations", is of course nothing new in the economic world.