Word: microsoft
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Access to the Windows desktop was another weapon in Microsoft's war with Netscape. Microsoft wanted to persuade leading Internet content providers--including the Disney, Intuit and National Geographic websites--to side with Explorer. Microsoft offered them a deal. If they promoted and distributed Explorer--and not Netscape's Navigator--their sites would be listed on the Windows desktop. That would give them free access to millions of Windows users, an invaluable source of traffic for a fledgling site. All this leveraging proved highly effective: Netscape's share of the browser market plunged from 80% in 1996 to 30% today...
...Microsoft also used Windows to punish companies that crossed the software maker. When IBM insisted on developing products that Microsoft saw as a threat, Microsoft withheld technical support and raised the price it charged IBM for Windows. And Microsoft used its Windows monopoly to help its applications division--the programmers who write software like Microsoft Word--by giving them preferred access to the complex Windows source code. Non-Microsoft programmers have long asked for equal access to the source code--but Microsoft has steadfastly refused to give...
...remedy to work, it will have to change how Microsoft uses Windows for leverage. The least drastic approach--and the one most likely to be upheld on appeal--would put restrictions on Microsoft's conduct. Judge Jackson could fashion a set of rules or commandments to live by: Thou shalt not sell Windows to some PC makers at lower prices than others; thou shalt not use placement on the Windows desktop as a bargaining chip...
...trouble with a conduct remedy is that almost nobody thinks it would work. It's tough enough to craft rules to stop all the bad things Microsoft has already done. It may be impossible for any court to anticipate how the company might misbehave in the future. "There's a real question about whether a conduct remedy can be sufficiently forward looking," says Barry Jaruzelski, a computer analyst at Booz, Allen & Hamilton, a consulting firm based in McLean...
...then there's the problem of getting Microsoft to obey the new rules. "Conduct remedies require some degree of cooperation and good faith--or a very significant enforcement apparatus," says Ed Black, president of the Computer & Communications Industry Association. Microsoft's critics complain that the company doesn't act in good faith: they point out that this case was filed in the first place when Justice determined Microsoft had violated a 1995 consent agreement. Enforcement mechanisms have their own problems. Almost nobody--inside Microsoft or out of it--wants the Federal Government overseeing Microsoft's business decisions and product designs...