A lot of people complain that Microsoft has become an overly bureaucratic, unimaginative, lumbering behemoth that tends to trample on the rights of its customers and competitors.
Having a federal government-sanctioned “technical committee” oversee the creation of the next version of Windows is apparently going to solve those problems.
According to Microsoft Watch, the Department of Justice is still overseeing software development at Microsoft, under the terms of the 2001 antitrust settlement:
Under the terms of Microsoft’s November 2001 Justice Department settlement and final court judgment issued about a year later, a government-sanctioned “Technical Committee” has overseen Windows development. The TC is responsible for ensuring that Microsoft complies with the terms of the final judgment, investigating complaints about Microsoft abuses and regularly reporting on the company’s compliance.
The TC required some changes before the operating system’s release. Each quarter, the Justice Department, Microsoft and states’ attorneys general file a joint “status report,” largely based on the TC’s activities. The process should have mostly ended on Nov. 12. But Google (and some other Microsoft competitors) requested an extension, and U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly gave it to them: two more years of government oversight.
Microsoft was found guilty of being a monopoly, and whether you agree with that verdict or not, it’s the law.
But I think it’s fair to wonder whether it’s really in the best interest of consumers to have Google, one of Microsoft’s biggest competitors, directing the federal government to decide how Microsoft can design its products.
Google, as it grows, is coming under antitrust scrutiny itself, due to its partnership with Yahoo and the fact that Google is the default search engine in Firefox, a browser that Google has financial ties with.
Microsoft, notably, is forbidden from making its own search engine the default in its Internet Explorer browser.
Before this all gets out of hand, though, perhaps the grand poobahs at Microsoft, Google, Apple, Oracle, Mozilla and so forth ought to get together and agree that keeping the federal government out of the software business is in everybody’s best interest.
Of course, such a meeting would probably constitute an illegal cartel, and then we’d be right back where we started.
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