| The EU just followed what the US courts said during Clinton. Clinton turned MS into a whipping boy. In retrospect, the courts were wrong. Netscape's profit model made no sense. People didn't want to pay for commodity software like a web browser. MS had every right to release a free one bundled with their platform. The web isn't some optional thing. A browser is part of every OS now. On top of it, the deal MS signed didn't let it control OEMs so that laptop that's full of shitware that slows Windows down and gives it a huge attack surface is not something MS could fight until recently with Win8. The government empowered OEMs. The Netscape/MS fight wasn't worth it. The government should never have stepped in. In the end the best product wins. I, and everyone I know, got Chrome via downloading it. Not via some fancy choice menu. I think the truth here is that Netscape had a lot of friends in the government and Clinton's DOJ wanted to make some career defining kills. Bill Gates was an obvious target. It was wrong for Clinton to attack MS. It didn't stop IE6's dominance, it didn't revive Netscape, and it didn't fix anything. If anything, it made everything worse. Tech is generally a meritocracy. People can just migrate to whatever software they life. MS wasn't stopping Firefox or Netscape from being installed. Lets give our companies room to compete. Lets not applaud heavy handed legislation from either the US or the EU. I mean, google fucking maps can't even be seen in Spain due to corruption. Governments are just as corrupt as business. Except government is an unstoppable monopoly with guns. |
The lawsuit should have been over their Office suite. (And no, in the end, the best product did not win.)