Re: Microsoft: OEM choice would be a "disaster"

[Steve Cohen <stevecoh@mcs.com>]

MarkCooper@aol.com wrote:

> This line of discussion raises three things I have been banging away at
> whenever I get a chance.
>
> 1)  The case is not about technology, it is about business.  Every time the
> courts wander into technology questions they lose sight of the simple fact
> that the issue is business practices.  If the business anticompetitive
> business practices are driven out of the industry, the technology will
> flourish.

I agree.  And yet, the Microsoft defense is always that the government doesn't
understand technology, they don't understand that Microsoft MUST do it the way it
does it.  This is, of course, nonsense, and refuting these claims does then
become an important part of the case.

>
>
> 2)  Although the long history of anticompetitive practices stretches back more
> than a decade, the case does have to go to trial over specific vilations of
> law.
>
> 3)  It is super interesting to note that the Kempin pricing memo readily
> recognizes that the OS can be broken into pieces.  Microsoft only considers
> this acceptable when it controls the deintegration of functionalities for the
> purposes of preserving its abusive pricing.