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David R. Henderson, Ph.D. Economics Dear
Web reader, For
the last 20 years, I have been a beneficiary of the information
technology revolution.
The computer, Windows, WordPerfect, Word, Hewlett-Packard, the
Internet, Eudora, the Web, efax, Amazon.com and Google have
revolutionized my life.
That’s why I was concerned when I started to hear all the
anti-Microsoft talk in the late 1990s.
People, I concluded, hated Microsoft for two main reasons: (1)
they were Microsoft competitors who didn’t like the competition and
(2) that old green-eyed monster, envy.
That motivated me to write an article about it, “The
Case for Microsoft,” for Red
Herring in April 1997.
My article struck such a nerve, based on the feedback I got, that
I knew I was onto something.
I responded to some of the feedback in “Reply
to My Critics,” Red Herring,
July 1997. After
the federal government stepped up its campaign of coercion against
Microsoft, I wrote “Kiss
the Emperor’s Ring,” Red
Herring, April 1998.
I took on Stewart Alsop’s claim that because the federal
government has the guns, it should be able to do pretty much whatever it
wants to Microsoft or anyone else.
As the federal case against Microsoft picked up steam, I
revisited some of the issues in “The
Case Against the Microsoft Suit,” Red
Herring, August 1998.
Then, in “Why
Silicon Valley is Getting Political,” Red
Herring, February 2000, I showed how the very same federal power
that Alsop had wanted Microsoft to bow down to accounted for the
politicization of Silicon Valley that he later noted.
Yet more recently I wrote about the Microsoft trial in
“A
Short History of Monopolies,” Red
Herring, June 2000. In
writing about the federal government’s suit against Microsoft, I could
see the basis for the fear some people had of a Microsoft unrestrained
in its ability to wangle tough contract terms for itself.
I could see it, even though I didn’t agree with it. Now
Microsoft, as part of its settlement with the feds, has agreed to change
many of its practices, and even to change some that were not at issue in
the trial.
But that’s not enough for 9 attorneys general, who are now
still at war with Microsoft. They want further restrictions on Microsoft
-- restrictions that would harm consumers. First,
they want to expropriate Microsoft’s intellectual property in Office,
a piece of software that played only a cameo role at the trial.
While that could mean a lower price for Office in the near term,
the long-run effects for us consumers will be wholly negative.
If the state attorneys general prevail, the federal court will in
effect be saying, “Write good software, and do a great marketing job,
and we might just take it away.”
Second, the 9 state attorneys general want to require Microsoft
to create literally hundreds of Windows, effectively customizing it to
the demands of individual computer makers.
Economist Stan Leibowitz calls the likely result “Swiss Cheese
Windows.”
If the 9 attorneys general prevail, gone would be the convenience
and ease of use, and the ease of writing applications software, that
come with knowing that every copy of Windows 2000 is just like every
other Windows 2000.
Microsoft has recently asked me to serve as a consultant to the company. But those of you who know me will understand that I won’t allow the relationship to color my views. And I invite those of you who don’t to read my earlier pieces on the antitrust case along with “Evaluating the Litigating States’ Proposed Remedy for Microsoft: Aiding Rivals at Consumers’ Expense.” |
