DOJ and US Lawmakers on EU's Decision and My 2 Cents As Well
”The European Commission's order for Microsoft Corp. to ship a version of Windows without the Windows Media Player could stifle innovation and help Microsoft's rivals instead of promoting fair competition, the U.S. Department of Justice's antitrust chief said Wednesday..."The U.S. experience tells us that the best antitrust remedies eliminate impediments to the healthy functioning of competitive markets without hindering successful competitors or imposing burdens on third parties, which may result from the EC's remedy," [1]
“This effort by the commission to address issues that were previously settled in the U.S. courts will undermine the global competitiveness of many U.S. firms, impede American job growth, and impair innovation in many U.S. sectors," Representative Robert Wexler” [2]
The EU commissioner Monti wrote in his statement about the Microsoft decision:
“In the end, I had do decide what was best for competition and consumers in Europe. I believe they will be better served with a decision that creates a strong precedent. It is essential to have a precedent which will establish clear principles for the future conduct of a company with such a strong dominant position in the market.“ [3]
I really don't get this. How are consumers better off having to pay $500 for their PC and then another $500 for software programs to handle every-day functions (such as media playback, web browsing, entertainment, and document creation)? Taking this future, can we expect that from now on every time a new technology comes out that consumers will have to pay for additional products to take advantage of it? So, when speech recognition becomes good enough for every day use, Microsoft won't be able to include speach recognition with the OS, you will have to go buy a copy of “Real-Voice“ to take advantage of it. When biometric security becomes a viable technology, you will have to go out and buy a copy of “Real-Bio“ too. And while you're at it, lets make people go buy a copy of “Real-3D“ to handle all the 3d computations, “Real-Transaction Manager“ for distributed transaction support and “Real-Pain-In-The-Ass“ for all their other daily needs.
Saying that Microsoft including a media player with their OS injures consumers is like saying Ford installing CD players in cars hurts consumers. It is just rediculous. Installing CD players in cars is not only good for consumers but it helps a boatload of others, such as the recording industry, by increasing the adoption rate of CDs. Microsoft including a media player with the OS is good for consumers in the same way, but also is good for the industries that will benefit from digital media distribution (the potential revenues there are HUGE). Nothing prohibits consumers who aren't satisfied with their standard CD player from going out and buying a new one, and nothing prohibits consumers who aren't satsified with their standard media player from going out and buying a new one. However, the simple fact is that the average consumer would much rather just use the free one, because if they had a choice between having to pay for one and not having one at all, they would end up choosing not having one at all, because they just don't have them money. At least with hardware, prices decrease over time, so people eventually switch when the cost is low enough that it no longer seems like a waste of money. However, software packages generally do not decrease too rapidly (if at all) in price as time goes on so they do not benefit from the “I'll just buy it when it is cheap“ mentality. Yah, maybe $20 for a media player isn't too bad, but add that on top of all the regular stuff (like AntiVirus, etc.) and you could very quickly add up hundreds of dollars worth of relatively basic items just to get your computer up to snuff.
Just because an operating system didn't used to contain X functionality and some third party vendor just happens to make a product that provides such functionality, users shouldn't be forced to dish out extra cash to take advantage of it. If we restrict the OS features to what they were in 1990, then software is not going to progress and all our software dev sure as hell is going to be shipped off to India, because creating quality software is going to be just to darn hard. Maybe in 1990 media players didn't make sense as a core OS service, but take a look at what MS has done with the Media Center PC and you can see a perfectly valid reason why media playback at the OS level makes sense (I wish every computer had that functionality out of the box because it is just so darn cool). You might say, “but Media Player is just a shell on top of the basic media services, you should ship the services, but not the shell.“ To which I would reply, “Are you freaking insane? The part of the OS that draws the start menu and all the windows you see popping up on your monitor is 'just a shell' too you dimwitted moron.“ How does the fact that something lights up some pixels on your monitor make it harmful to consumers? Maybe media playback doesn't seem like a core OS component to you, but maybe you just don't listen to enough music or watch enough videos. 20 years ago, graphical Windows and True Type fonts were not something that people would have seen as a core OS component. The OS was just about proving reliable and standard basic services such as file management so that users didn't have to write those complex INT 13h calls themselves and turn a user's hard disk into spagetti. I would contend that for a large number of college students who use their computers for nothing more than downloading songs from Napster, a media player makes a hell of a lot more sense as a core OS component than something like distributed transaction management, which no one seems to be complaining about. Providing as broad a base for application development as possible ensures that as broad a base of consumers can be satisfied.
Sun wants Microsoft to unbundle .NET. Real wants Microsoft to unbundle Media Player. Netscape wants Microsoft to unbundle IE. If everyone has their way users are going to bring home a pretty useless box of metal from BestBuy. Is Microsoft just prohibitted from adding features to the OS? Are they prohibitted from making the OS more useful to consumers? It's not like they are forcing people to upgrade their systems or developers to write code on newer platforms. If you want to run or build software on Windows 3.1, you still can. If you want to run or build software on Windows 95, you still can. But, you probably don't want to, because OS level improvements have made much of the software that you are using today possible, because they have lowered development costs.
[1] http://www.infoworld.com/article/04/03/25/HNcritique_1.html
[2] http://www.infoworld.com/article/04/03/25/HNeudecision%20_1.html