Sonia Arrison

Microsoft and Antitrust: Retro-Regulators Threaten Tech Future

At a time when most people agree that Google or Apple have replaced Microsoft as the tech industry’s top player, government regulators on two continents are going retro, pushing old antitrust arguments. This backward-looking thinking threatens innovation for all companies and needs to stop now.

While the technology community has moved from obsessing over operating systems to focusing on Internet search and digital media government regulators are stuck in the past, wasting taxpayer time and money. A case in point is a group of states, led by California’s Attorney General and former governor Jerry Brown. This week, they told a federal judge that Microsoft’s “market power remains undiminished,” a statement that must make the execs at Google and Apple giggle with glee. For those who see the transition to Web-based services taking off, it’s a total joke.

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September 14, 2007 | Comments |

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    Sonia, you may be correct -in this case - to assert that regulators may be chilling technological progress. What I find troubling is the lack of acknowledgment that private industry is doing what it can to stifle technological progress as a means of achieving monopolistic status by frustrating competition. The Electronic Frontier Foundation reported on Sept. 11, 2007 that "In an important ruling today, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals blocked satellite television provider DirecTV's heavy-handed legal tactics and protected security and computer science research into satellite and smart card technology after hearing argument from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF)." I hope that when private industry attempts to frustrate technological progress that this will be disclosed too and not overlooked.
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    While Google and Apple are clearly growing faster than Microsoft, I don't think that alone is sufficient to put them in the lead. Microsoft clearly still dominates the market for personal computer operating systems and office applications in the corporate world.

    The Rally's hamburger fast food chain used to call itself the "fastest growing fast food chain" in the U.S.--but that was only in percentage terms. It's easy for the smaller guy to have faster growth in percentage terms than the big guy.

    Microsoft: market cap $268.89B, annual revenue $51B
    Google: market cap $163.87B, annual revenue $10.6B
    Apple: market cap $120.97B, annual revenue $19B
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    microsoft needs to wake up.google has captured half the market by now.
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    david
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