January 23, 2002
From the desk of Jane Galt:Netscape and AOL are suing
Netscape and AOL are suing Microsoft for anti-trust, claiming competitive pressures hurt them. Now, I'm not a lawyer (although I fervently hope that the assertion I'm about to make isn't as ignorant as the ones generally following "Now, I'm no economist") but my understanding of anti-trust law is that its purpose is to protect consumers from suffering, under a monopoly or near-monopoly, higher prices and lower quality than they would otherwise get. I don't think that it is supposed to protect companies from competition, no matter how strenuous or unfair.
It was widely believed in the tech community -- at least, in the small portion of it that I occupied -- that the DOJ suit was entirely the product of a dark coalition of Sun, Netscape, and Apple, who wanted to use the suit to either destroy Microsoft or provide them a guaranteed sinecure as part of a government sponsored market carve-up; and states attorneys general, who hoped to get money out of any settlements. I consider myself Microsoft neutral (although, of course, Tom Brokaw also considers himself moderate, so perhaps I'm a lackey of the Evil Empire without quite realizing it), but the sight of the buzzards circling to carve up the carcass of a once successful company did not inspire in me any great confidence in the merits of the suit. I also know quite a few people who outright hated Microsoft, but thought that the anti-trust suit would be bad for the industry by injecting the government into a dynamic market it couldn't possibly regulate effectively, and thereby placing an enormous risk premium on success.
Well, now it's out in the open -- the Microsoft suit wasn't about protecting consumers, but about protecting Netscape's right to sell browsers, whether consumers wanted 'em or not. In the spirit of Robert Heinlein, if this suit succeeds, I shall open an oil-lamp factory and sue GE for irreparable harm to my business.
Posted by Jane Galt at January 23, 2002 09:05 AM | TrackBack | Technorati inbound links