All,
Does the following inconsistency bother anyone else?
Microsoft is complaining about the DoJ's antitrust inquiries
on the grounds that the government oughtn't to interfere in software
development and technological innovation because of free market principles;
i.e., companies like MS ought to be free to give consumers what they want.
But no one at MS complains about government interference in the market when
it benefits them; i.e., you haven't heard MS offering to pay the public back
for the taxes that were used to INVENT the Internet in the first place, the
infrastructure of the WWW which the browser wars are all about in the first
place.
Microsoft, and all other companies that sell Internet access, connectivity,
and software, are publicly-subsidized corporations, and yet they try to
parade around as lovers of the free market when it suits them.
Government interference is fine when it creates conditions that allow MS to
create private wealth; but government interference, in the form of antitrust
and monopoly regulation, is totally unacceptable when it threatens private
wealth.
That really pisses me off. Does MS think that we as consumers are so stupid
as to not notice their hypocritical inconsistency?
Why doesn't anyone in the computer press point this out?
Best,
Kendall G. Clark
--
Linux is free. Life is good.