The Gift Of The Windows Monopoly
As the European Union gets more and more aggressive against Microsoft for abusing its Windows monopoly, Americans may be excused for not understanding the logic of EU antitrust decisions. American antitrust law is about protecting consumers. European law is about protecting jobs and companies, with only a passing nod at consumer protection.
Microsoft is not alone in its conflicts with these EU laws. Steve Jobs, whose monopolist instincts make Bill Gates blush, has railed against the EUs attack on the iTunes-iPod tie-in. Google is feeling the heat over its plan to acquire DoubleClick.
Now, there are EU rumblings that bundling an operating system with a computer is anti-competitive. By extension, the same would be true of cell phones. Oh, goody, we can get back to the old days when you bought a computer that sat like a brick until you bought an OS and figured out how to install and configure it. And who can wait to do the same with a billion or so cell phones each year.
The world has benefited greatly from the Windows monopoly. It gave developers a single target which enabled them to produce an amazing array of applications. It gave hardware manufacturers a de facto standard for developing all manner of peripheral devices. It gave all of us a mass market for PCs, driving down costs and spurring innovation. It was at the center and, I would argue, was and is a driving force behind the technological revolution of the last few decades.
One of the EUs main complaints is the bundling of Windows Media Player with Windows. This led to a European version of Windows without WMP, which no one buys. Ironically, WMP is losing usage share to iTunes, not as a result of the silly EU sanction.
The market will decide what an operating system should contain. Consumers use a wide variety of email applications, mainly web-based, event though Windows bundles an email program. Consumers expect a wide variety of capabilities to be bundled in the OS (Apple's OS X bundles most of the same types of applications as Windows). They also will decide when the want something better (Microsoft Money, often bundled with Windows, loses to Quicken by a wide margin).
The EU approach to monopolies in technology will lead to higher consumer prices and slower tech adoption.
Copyright © 2007 Philip Bookman
Technorati: Business Strategy, Management
Microsoft is not alone in its conflicts with these EU laws. Steve Jobs, whose monopolist instincts make Bill Gates blush, has railed against the EUs attack on the iTunes-iPod tie-in. Google is feeling the heat over its plan to acquire DoubleClick.
Now, there are EU rumblings that bundling an operating system with a computer is anti-competitive. By extension, the same would be true of cell phones. Oh, goody, we can get back to the old days when you bought a computer that sat like a brick until you bought an OS and figured out how to install and configure it. And who can wait to do the same with a billion or so cell phones each year.
The world has benefited greatly from the Windows monopoly. It gave developers a single target which enabled them to produce an amazing array of applications. It gave hardware manufacturers a de facto standard for developing all manner of peripheral devices. It gave all of us a mass market for PCs, driving down costs and spurring innovation. It was at the center and, I would argue, was and is a driving force behind the technological revolution of the last few decades.
One of the EUs main complaints is the bundling of Windows Media Player with Windows. This led to a European version of Windows without WMP, which no one buys. Ironically, WMP is losing usage share to iTunes, not as a result of the silly EU sanction.
The market will decide what an operating system should contain. Consumers use a wide variety of email applications, mainly web-based, event though Windows bundles an email program. Consumers expect a wide variety of capabilities to be bundled in the OS (Apple's OS X bundles most of the same types of applications as Windows). They also will decide when the want something better (Microsoft Money, often bundled with Windows, loses to Quicken by a wide margin).
The EU approach to monopolies in technology will lead to higher consumer prices and slower tech adoption.
Copyright © 2007 Philip Bookman
Technorati: Business Strategy, Management
Labels: Business Strategy, Management
posted by Phil Bookman at 10:20 AM
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