3 ms·

Often the people who decry the era of desktop PCs over also still believe it righteous for the US and EU governments to levy fines and targeted regulations on M

by bhauer 13y ago

Often the people who decry the era of desktop PCs over also still believe it righteous for the US and EU governments to levy fines and targeted regulations on Microsoft. Which is it: are desktop PCs relevant and therefore worthy of strong-handed regulation or are they irrelevant? Surely if they are irrelevant, we can call off the government attack dogs and allow Microsoft to bundle a browser and media player with their desktop operating system already, yes? So thank you, OP, for bringing attention to the regulatory position Microsoft is in versus its competition. I've ranted elsewhere [1] about the market-holistic detriment I believe the anti-trust judgments caused. At the time, I had been of mixed feelings, being an avid Netscape fan. Since then, I've come to regard the anti-trust cases as a tragedy. Ultimately, I think it was not just Microsoft who suffered but also the consumer. I presently find the world of mobile computing far from the ideal that I want, and I feel it arrived in this form thanks in large part to an unnaturally narrow competitive landscape (the irony!) When I retrace the steps of the past 15 years, I see there were fits of movement in a direction of unified computing, but those were lost. Only recently with the NSA leaks and a gradual pendulum swing back to self-control are we seeing some blips of unified computing. Yet now Microsoft concedes that tablets and mobile phones should be first-class computing devices (argh!) and simply follows the proven money-making model of the other titans. I still hold out some hope that they will come around to a unified computing model, among other things [2]. [1] http://tiamat.tsotech.com/microsoft-awakens http://tiamat.tsotech.com/microsoft-awakens and [2] http://tiamat.tsotech.com/microsoft http://tiamat.tsotech.com/microsoft

rbanffy 13y ago
> Which is it: are desktop PCs relevant and therefore worthy of strong-handed regulation or are they irrelevant? The question is irrelevant. While PCs are rapidly losing importance in the general computing and communications market, Microsoft's monopoly extends over most of the desktop computer market. It is, therefore, a monopoly. It may not be as important as it once was, but the PC market is still huge by all measurements (and is mostly less relevant these days because the mobile device segment exploded).
- bhauer 13y ago
  Do we go after Instagram for being a monopoly on photo sharing? Twitter for a monopoly on arbitrarily-small marketing messages and snark? Facebook for a monopoly on social networking? Yet, the EU has--in laughably minor ways--gone after Google for its monopoly on search. It seems there is some correlation between the size (real or imagined) of the market with whether the government attack dogs are loosed. The point may not really be relevant to the matter at hand, I'll agree. But it's nevertheless amusing to me how often I see the same people who decry desktop computing to be over still harping on about the need for the government to bust Microsoft for its desktop computing monopoly.
  - nknighthb 13y ago
    There is no law against being a monopoly. Microsoft was not punished for being a monopoly. They were punished (poorly) for abusing their monopoly position.
    - bhauer 13y ago
      Reducing the situation so ends up sounding disturbingly capricious, where favors are granted to the politically powerful and oppression is handed out to the politically weak by defining their actions as abusive. I feel Google abuses its search monopoly to shove Chrome down my throat. I feel Youtube abuses its web video monopoly to force me into using Google+. I feel just about every company is shoving their cloud services and making management and control of local resources frustratingly limited by comparison. But do I want any government to step in and assist me? No, thank you very much. I feel I'd be happier with technology today--perhaps only slightly, mind you, but happier--had Microsoft been left alone in the late 90s/early 2000s.
      - hga 13y ago
        The US, at least, in theory goes further, consumers must be harmed. The above examples may be abusive, but are they harming you?
      - 13y ago

by bhauer 13y ago

rbanffy 13y ago

> Which is it: are desktop PCs relevant and therefore worthy of strong-handed regulation or are they irrelevant? The question is irrelevant. While PCs are rapidly losing importance in the general computing and communications market, Microsoft's monopoly extends over most of the desktop computer market. It is, therefore, a monopoly. It may not be as important as it once was, but the PC market is still huge by all measurements (and is mostly less relevant these days because the mobile device segment exploded).

bhauer 13y ago
Do we go after Instagram for being a monopoly on photo sharing? Twitter for a monopoly on arbitrarily-small marketing messages and snark? Facebook for a monopoly on social networking? Yet, the EU has--in laughably minor ways--gone after Google for its monopoly on search. It seems there is some correlation between the size (real or imagined) of the market with whether the government attack dogs are loosed. The point may not really be relevant to the matter at hand, I'll agree. But it's nevertheless amusing to me how often I see the same people who decry desktop computing to be over still harping on about the need for the government to bust Microsoft for its desktop computing monopoly.
- nknighthb 13y ago
  There is no law against being a monopoly. Microsoft was not punished for being a monopoly. They were punished (poorly) for abusing their monopoly position.
  - bhauer 13y ago
    Reducing the situation so ends up sounding disturbingly capricious, where favors are granted to the politically powerful and oppression is handed out to the politically weak by defining their actions as abusive. I feel Google abuses its search monopoly to shove Chrome down my throat. I feel Youtube abuses its web video monopoly to force me into using Google+. I feel just about every company is shoving their cloud services and making management and control of local resources frustratingly limited by comparison. But do I want any government to step in and assist me? No, thank you very much. I feel I'd be happier with technology today--perhaps only slightly, mind you, but happier--had Microsoft been left alone in the late 90s/early 2000s.
    - hga 13y ago
      The US, at least, in theory goes further, consumers must be harmed. The above examples may be abusive, but are they harming you?
    - 13y ago