The decision will stifle innovation, we are told. It forces Microsoft to give away its intellectual property. It cripples a powerful economic engine that has sustained the boom economy. They won't be able to make more of those great products they produce. Not only do I disagree with those arguments, I think the decision is good for consumers and good for the economy.
I use more products from Microsoft than any other software company, but it's not because they're the best of class or the most innovative. In fact, most Microsoft products, in my opinion, are inferior to competing products. But, because of the nature of my consulting business and Microsoft's dominance of the software market, I feel compelled to use their products so I can keep making a living.
But that choice means, for example, that I reboot my computer several times a day because I've used up all the memory in Windows 98SE and Windows won't give it back, even if I close all my applications. My souped-up W98 system, with a 500-Mhz Pentium III, actually runs slower than my wife's W95 system, with a 233-Mhz Pentium MMX. This is great innovation? And this is the fifth major version of Windows. Microsoft defends the price as being low, but the company makes so much profit from this one product that it can give away Internet Explorer and still make Bill Gates the world's richest man.
Incompatibilities
I bought my new computer system last fall, and installed Office 97, Visual Studio 6 (the programming languages), and Office 2000 (all Microsoft products, you'll note). All was fine for a while until I had to reinstall everything, for reasons I can't recall now. I put on Office 97, then Office 2000, then Visual Studio 6. Bad idea. Nothing worked right. Programs crashed and refused to re-start. Finally I realized the three had to be installed in a specific order: first Office 97, then Visual Studio 6, then Office 2000. Any other order would leave incompatible versions of support files fighting with each other. This is not an uncommon problem. InfoWorld columnist Brian Livingston regularly castigates Microsoft for perpetuating the travails of "DLL hell"-newer versions of crucial Windows files that are incompatible with other programs, including Microsoft applications.
In an attempt to resolve the incompatibilities, I removed Visual Studio. Unfortunately, it didn't fix the problem. Now I have to reformat the drive and start over yet again, but not until I re-install my CD-writer so I can copy off the files I'll need (including all my Sacra Blue material).
Let's discuss innovation. Microsoft bought DOS from Seattle Computer Products, which copied most of it from CP/M, an older operating system. The best parts of Windows arguably came from OS/2, which IBM turned over to Microsoft for development. Excel is a pretty good product, but it's a copy of Lotus 1-2-3, which copied Visicalc. Internet Explorer? A copy of Netscape Navigator, which was developed by the people who designed the original browser, Mosaic. Money? A copy of Quicken. Flight Simulator may have been a fairly original idea. Oh yes, and Microsoft Bob.
It is widely believed in the technical community that Microsoft has for decades been rigging the DOS and Windows operating systems to break other people's programs, while allowing Microsoft's offerings to run better. If you've been around long enough, you remember the old saying, "Word's not done 'til Lotus won't run." Meaning: Word isn't ready for release until installing it makes Lotus 1-2-3 not work right.
The Microsoft e-mail produced during the recent anti-trust trial strongly suggests that view is accurate. It's certainly clear that Microsoft bludgeoned customers with Windows to close off markets to their competitors.
The Merits of Competition
A number of years ago I was working for an engineering firm, primarily producing environmental impact reports. Those monsters were master/subdocuments, anywhere from 100-300 pages long, with illustrations, generated indexes and tables of contents, and tables that ran over multiple pages. WordPerfect 5.1 (for DOS!) handled all that without a hiccup. Microsoft Word still can't handle that kind of material reliably.
For my money, the two best products Microsoft puts out are Excel and Internet Explorer. I think it is no coincidence that these two had the strongest competition in the marketplace (possibly excepting Word's competitor, WordPerfect, which had help from Novell in self-destructing). The message I get is that Microsoft needs the competition to push it to excel (pardon the pun).
There is speculation that the two halves of Microsoft, if the judgment stands, will simply be two new monopolies. That's certainly possible, but I can foresee companies being more willing to challenge one of those two than they currently are to challenge Microsoft. That can only lead to technical innovation and better, cheaper products.
And if dividing the company in two forces the new parts to compete, even if only against each other, the consumer is better off.
