Last modified: Fri May 7 13:52:25 EDT 2004
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| Who is this man, and why is he so eager to get his hands on my computer? |
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Microsoft. Just typing the name sends a shudder up my spine. Since the early 1990s, no other company has had as much influence on how people use computers. Microsoft has used its effective monopoly on desktop operatng systems to dominate almost every aspect of personal computing: work processing, spreadsheets, web browsers, music and video presentation. The joke among employees at software startups is that every successful business plan ends with "...and then we get bought by Microsoft." More seriously, the entrance of Microsoft into a software market generally signals the end of diversity in that market - and the end of innovation.
The courts and the media have consistently misunderstood what's really needed to rein in Microsoft's monopoly power, focusing on outcomes and not mechanism. The two great examples are so-called "browser war" of the late 1990s, fought primarily between Microsoft's Internet Explorer and Netscape's Navigator, and the more recent struggle over streaming audio and video formats, pitting Microsoft's Windows Media formats against competing formats from Apple and RealNetworks.
It's not simply a matter of competing applications and data formats. The root of the problem lies in control over interface and data form specifications. If the specifications for Windows Media (or Quicktime, or RealAudio/RealVideo) streams were freely available then anyone could introduce software to present those formats to a PC user. Similarly, Microsoft's refusal to publish detail specifications of the Windows networking protocols (for user authentication, file sharing, etc.) make it very difficult for competing applications and operating systems to participate in Windows networks. The has the devastating effect of essentially forcing anyone with a network -- businesses, both large and small, and, increasingly, home users -- to pick a single operating system for all of the machines on the network.