Re: Car Radio Analogy (was: Cato publishes commentary onMicrosoft trial)

["Eric M. Bennett" <ericb@pobox.com>]

Joe Moore wrote:

>This article offers an analogy of Web browser -> car radio preset
>stations.  It says that the driver isn't restricted by having the dealer
>set a few preset stations.
>
>Wouldn't a closer analogy be a car radio that is programmed by the dealer
>to periodically reset its presets to the "default" and automatically
>change to the station where it hears a commercial for that dealership?

My problem with Levy's argument was that in the case of an auto buyer there
is no fee for the radio station included in the price of the car.  The
radio can be set to an undesired station and the user incurs no extra cost.
Th tying argument here is very weak.

But when IE is force-bundled, people who do not want IE are forced to help
pay for its development, on which Microsoft admits it has spent hundreds of
millions of dollars.  The tying argument here is much stronger.

I think the radio analogy is more like setting a browser's default home
page to a site the user doesn't like.  That is easily changed and imposes
no noticeable cost.



--
Eric Bennett ( http://www.pobox.com/~ericb/ )
Department of Chemistry & Chemical Biology, Cornell University
377 Olin Chemistry Lab

A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is
nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.
-  Antoine de Saint-Exup'ery