By Gary Kirchherr
Try as I may, I can't get away from news about Micro$oft. Now I can't even curl up with "National Review" without running into another tidbit about the company's ongoing legal battles with the U.S. Department of Justice. In the "For the Record" column of the magazine's July 20 issue, I found the following: "Anonymous Microsoft employee sends copies of Ayn Rand's novel 'Atlas Shrugged' to state attorneys general joining in Justice Department lawsuit."
Excuse me while I laugh.
You really have to be familiar with this Ms. Rand's libertarian tome to understand why the NR brings such unintended mirth, so allow me to summarize the gist of "Atlas Shrugged": The world's great capitalists, its Movers And Shakers, finally get fed up with crippling interference by parasitical government bureaucrats and other incompetent Mere Mortals with whom they must deal. One by one, the great Movers And Shakers disappear, and with only Mere Mortals left to run things, Civilization As We Know It falls into greater and greater chaos. As the world teeters on the edge of a new Dark Age, the Movers And Shakers are in a position to demand a New World Order on their terms in exchange for their return.
"Atlas Shrugged" is great fiction. When I read it in my early 20s, it was both the most ambitious and most influential piece of literature I'd ever tackled; it's still on my short list of favorite novels. But after you get over the thrill of an exciting story, Gentle Reader wishes he could look the mercurial Ms. Rand in the eye and say, "Lighten up." Ms. Rand's two-dimensional characters, at least in retrospect, just cannot be taken seriously. Which brings us back to the present, and our anonymous Micro$oft employee.
No one in the Justice Department is going to be intimidated by the ludicrous assertion that Micro$oft has today's Movers And Shakers, and that we had all better bow before this company lest its leaders leave us to wallow in our own capitalistic incompetence. Sorry, but Bill Gates just doesn't measure up to John Galt, the enigmatic leader of the capitalists' walkout in "Atlas Shrugged."
Hey, Bill, you want to pull a Galt and disappear? Go ahead, and take Micro$oft with you, while you're at it. No one will shed any tears over one less ruthless monopoly. In a Window-less world of Mac OS, BeOS and Linux, we'd all be better off.
In Ms. Rand's capitalistic world, all the great Movers And Shakers exist in a world of perfect competition, where only the best and brightest ideas, products and services survive. Even before Micro$oft, the real world didn't work that way, and Micro$oft is the antithesis of this model. The much-ballyhooed Justice Department lawsuit over the bundling of Windows 95 and M$ Internet Explorer has shown just the tip of the iceberg of what's wrong with Ms. Rand's vision. Just look back to my July column, in which I mentioned the Software Publishers Association's complaint that M$ is monopolizing the market for high-end servers; Sen. Orrin Hatch's charge that M$ was not upfront during Senate committee hearings about the company's exclusionary contracts with Internet service providers; and dissention from all over about the monopolistic pricing for that buggy collection of minor patches known as Windows 98. Hmm. Somehow, I doubt the business model these complaints paint is what the ever-optimistic Ms. Rand was thinking about.
Speaking of Windows 98, its problems and how Micro$oft is dealing with them has reinforced the arguments of those who argue the company is abusing its monopolistic "partnerships" with computer makers. A July 8 CNet article goes into detail the problems Windows 98 has on some computers, mainly older ones. Some computer makers are warning customers about these problems; Dell went so far as to say its Dell Dimensions machines with 486-compatible processors are not recommended for Windows 98. But then lo and behold, two days later, a ZDNN article said sources at these computer makers said Micro$oft was pressuring computer makers to, well, shut up. Toshiba, Hewlett-Packard, and Dell are computer makers the article said were forced to alter their warnings about Windows 98 problems on their respective machines.
Ah, but the fun doesn't stop there. In a July 20 Yahoo! News article, a former official at Acer America official said Micro$oft pressured that computer maker to use Micro$oft products instead of its competitors. Ricardo Correa, once an Acer products manager, is quoted thusly: "The account manager at Microsoft would say to me, 'Ricardo, we really don't consider you a Microsoft partner just because you buy the operating system,' adding that Microsoft CEO 'Bill (Gates) is not happy with you.'"
Deja vu? Regular readers may remember my Dec. 2, 1997 column, that recounted then-Pacific Bell CEO David Dorman's experience with Micro$oft when PacBell dared to select Netscape Navigator to use with its Internet service. Steve Ballmer, M$ executive vice president of sales and services, reportedly told Dorman: "You're either a friend or a foe, and you're an enemy now." And yes, that's the same Steve Ballmer who less than two weeks ago was named Micro$oft president, second in power only to The Man himself.
Correa went on to say in the article that Acer kowtowed to Micro$oft because, as one of his bosses said, "We cannot afford retaliation." Acer suits also were afraid that if they angered Micro$oft, it would withhold updates and bug fixes. Said Correa: "If Microsoft does not give us information we are basically paralyzed."
This is scary stuff. The computing world owes a huge debt to Correa for singing. He has nothing to lose, though. The man is dropping out of the computer industry; virtually everyone else still in it is too scared of Micro$oft to talk. The Corleones in their wildest dreams couldn't enforce such a strict code of silence.
Oh, by the way. The Justice Department has subpoenaed Apple Computer over reports that Micro$oft tried to keep Apple out of the multimedia software market. Read about it in a July 23 articles in CNet and MacWEEK.com. And let's see, as reported in another July 23 MacWEEK.com article, RealNetworks CEO Rob Glaser told the Senate Judiciary Committee that Micro$oft software is intentionally breaking RealPlayer. The result is that users have to fall back on - you guessed it - Micro$oft's competing product. Several days later, Micro$oft posted an analysis of the problem and a fix. Perhaps the RealNetworks flap was simply too egregious an example of Micro$oft monopolistic arrogance to let the Justice Department get its hands on.
If you're not depressed enough, you can follow the latest developments at ZDNet Anchordesk's special site on the matter, "Microsoft vs. Government." The pile of evidence is particularly numbing, but rest assured, some stalwarts will continue to insist that Micro$oft is God's gift to computing, and the government is just meddling, and we critics are just "jealous." These blind defenders of the faith don't care what Micro$oft does, as long as the stock price continues to go up. How very sad that some people can be so shortsighted.
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