Reynolds on Microsoft

This arrived at the very last minute, just as I was putting the column to bed, and displaced some rather bland remarks about Java based on the JavaOne conference. I think Java has a chance of success, by the way, for sure on the server and maybe even on the client especially if Sun and its supporters meet with some success in the many efforts underway to speed up Java client performance.

But the Microsoft case continues to catch people's attention, so here are the comments of one of my most thoughtful correspondents, Craig Reynolds:

OK Paul, it could be that some of Microsoft's corporate victims had a hand in their own demise. It's easy to find mismanagement anywhere. (Including Microsoft, which is why I don't think this argument explains their current dominance).

But we will never know. Maybe those European nations would have allied with Hitler voluntarily, but once he blitzkrieged through them its hard to know what would have happened had he played fair. Since Microsoft engaged in a pervasive pattern of illegal business activities, its hard to know what would have happened if they had played fair.

OJ Simpson escaped conviction for murder largely because (1) the LA Police Department had indisputably been an openly racist organization for years under the leadership of Chief Daryl Gates, and (2) the LAPD's Crime Lab was so poorly funded it had fallen into demoralization and disrepair. It was easy for OJ's lawyers to make a plausible case that all the evidence was tainted, and that the whole investigation was a racist vendetta.

For the same reason its hard to make a convincing case that Microsoft's competitors would have self-destructed, because obviously Microsoft's illegal activities contributed to their decline. We will never know. But we do know that the consumer was clearly harmed by Microsoft's anti-competitive disruption of the free market.