MS Break Up Cancelled.

[donald 0]

ITN in the UK Just announced that Microsoft will not face breakup in its anti-trust case.

"The appeals court have overturned the decision that the Company should be broken up"

 

Thats all that was said.

[BladeRunner 0]

A report is available over on the BBC's web site:

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/business/newsid_1361000/1361934.stm

[Wolf87 0]

The appeals court ruled that Judge Jackson improperly conducted himself in the case, leaving himself open to the appearance he was biased against Microsoft:

 

"We vacate the judgment on remedies, because the trial judge engaged in impermissible ex parte contacts by holding secret interviews with members of the media and made numerous offensive comments about Microsoft officials in public statements outside of the courtroom, giving rise to an appearance of partiality,"

 

The Appeals Court's ruling questioned the partiality of Thomas Penfield Jackson so his final judgment is vacated in full and case is remanded to a new judge. Back to square one.

 

Read full Judgment text here:

 

http://cnnfn.cnn.com/2001/06/28/microsoft_file/decision.pdf

[Wolf87 0]

Microsoft held by Appeal Court to be a monopoly wielding anti-competitive and illegal tools and activities.

 

The first Judge's public statements outside of the courtroom gave rise to an appearance of partiality and although no evidence of actual bias was found the judicial process appeared tainted.

 

Remedies shall be granted on a per se basis for specific violations after a hearing by a new judge not giving rise to suspicion of bias.

 

 

http://cnnfn.cnn.com/2001/06/28/microsoft_file/decision.pdf

 

Extracts from text of the Judgement found here:

 

http://cnnfn.cnn.com/2001/06/28/microsoft_file/decision.pdf

 

"After carefully considering the voluminous record on appeal

—including the District Court’s Findings of Fact and

Conclusions of Law, the testimony and exhibits submitted at

trial, the parties’ briefs, and the oral arguments before this

court—we find that some but not all of Microsoft’s liability

challenges have merit. Accordingly, we affirm in part and

reverse in part the District Court’s judgment that Microsoft

violated § 2 of the Sherman Act by employing anticompetitive

means to maintain a monopoly in the operating system market;

we reverse the District Court’s determination that Microsoft

violated § 2 of the Sherman Act by illegally attempting

to monopolize the internet browser market; and we

remand the District Court’s finding that Microsoft violated

§ 1 of the Sherman Act by unlawfully tying its browser to its

operating system. Our judgment extends to the District

Court’s findings with respect to the state law counterparts of

the plaintiffs’ Sherman Act claims.

 

We also find merit in Microsoft’s challenge to the Final

Judgment embracing the District Court’s remedial order.

There are several reasons supporting this conclusion. First,

the District Court’s Final Judgment rests on a number of

liability determinations that do not survive appellate review;

therefore, the remedial order as currently fashioned cannot

stand. Furthermore, we would vacate and remand the remedial

order even were we to uphold the District Court’s

liability determinations in their entirety, because the District

Court failed to hold an evidentiary hearing to address remedies-

specific factual disputes.

 

Finally, we vacate the Final Judgment on remedies, because

the trial judge engaged in impermissible ex parte

contacts by holding secret interviews with members of the

media and made numerous offensive comments about Microsoft

officials in public statements outside of the courtroom,

giving rise to an appearance of partiality. Although we find

no evidence of actual bias, we hold that the actions of the trial

judge seriously tainted the proceedings before the District

Court and called into question the integrity of the judicial

process. We are therefore constrained to vacate the Final

Judgment on remedies, remand the case for reconsideration

of the remedial order, and require that the case be assigned

to a different trial judge on remand. We believe that this

disposition will be adequate to cure the cited improprieties.

In sum, for reasons more fully explained below, we affirm

in part, reverse in part, and remand in part the District

Court’s judgment assessing liability. We vacate in full the

Final Judgment embodying the remedial order and remand

the case to a different trial judge for further proceedings

consistent with this opinion."

[Brian Frank 0]

Of course, this trial is crap to begin with, so it's good MS has not been broken up. Not to say MS hasn't done anything wrong or illegal, but this case is just because people are pissed MS is bringing in the big bucks and they're not.

[donald 0]

I will probelly get flamed for this (I have been before on other forums ) But I Like Microsoft they have always been nice and helpful to me, Last week they sent me a brand new Keyboard to replace one that I bought 20 months ago that only had a broken leg :)a small problem with one of theire products resulted in the latest version sent to me 2 weeks before it hit the shops (over in the UK that is).

 

Yes they may of done wrong but I dont think they harmed anyone (Netscape has always crashed my PC, just my luck i know, but I dont like it because of that)

[ThC 129 0]

im not opposed to MS, im opposed to their ways of doing business. Instead of letting a company with a better product survive and flourish, in this case quicken, which was beating the living poo out of MS Money the company was bought out by MS. MS's business stratagies are what get me mad, because they can't stand competition in a market so they buy people out.

[clutch 1]

Hell, if you don't like MS buying out competitors, then you must HATE Cisco. They have been doing that forever. I wonder when the gavel will be coming their way...

 

[sapiens74 0]

Do really well your "living the American dream"

 

 

Do too well..... your a monopoly.

 

 

Anyone seen Intel's business practices, AMD was able to make a better product. MS has been a little over agressive, but that is thier right, they are a business.

 

 

It's like asking the Yankees to let someone win the World Series this year to help competition.

 

 

 

This is the Tech market you gotta fight, not sue, your way to the top.

When IE 4 came out it was a better product.

 

All I'd like to know is, if they hadn't included any browser in windows, how were we to get one? the average user that is

 

 

 

Just my 2 cents

[BladeRunner 0]

I've been against the whole court case from the very beginning.

As other posts have stated, the main reason for the whole case in the first place seemed to be jealousy.

A lot of MS competitors were finding it difficult to compete 'law suit'.

One of the biggest issues behind the case was the bundling of IE with their OS.

This was nothing but a good thing for the customer.

Netscape could have been considered a monopoly.

At the time of IE 2, Netscape didn't have a single competitor for the home PC market.

Then IE 3 was released, still wasn't great, but some people at last saw an alternative to Netscape.

With the release of IE 4, suddenly there was no competition.

IE was the better browser and even better if you bought a copy of the latest MS OS you had it built in!!

No IE, well I'm sure the average home user would be able to log into their ISP, start a DOS FTP session and then download a web browser.

Bundling things like that into the OS only benefit the end user.

If I was MS, I'd be tempted to build something called 'OfficeXP Lite' a really cut down version of Office and bundle that too.

Great for the end user!

 

The whole thing has been a joke really, only in America where we can penalise a company for being successful?

I don't know, I don't live in America, but it doesn't seem to happen everywhere in the world.

Yes monopolies are bad, they can dictate prices and force customers (us) to spend a lot of money.

However, let us all be honest here, if MS is a monopoly they aren't exactly charging the earth for their products - in the grand scale of monopolies MS seem to be one of the better ones, I mean, if they were a true monopoly they would be selling Windows at £1000 a copy and require an un-crackable hardware dongle.

[lager_brains 0]

I DO think MS are out of order as a company and they DO use their strength and size to pummel ANY competitor out of their way.

 

A simple analogy would be, "Ford Motors making cars AND supplying the World with petrol. Other car manufacturers could become very uncompetitive because (extending my analogy further) Ford could keep secret the chemical structure of the petrol, or they could put in additives into the petrol to make their engines run better than the competition's etc etc etc. This type of behavoiur would put other car companies out of business or make them look uncompetitive or unattractive to the consumer."

 

I know this is only an analogy BUT THIS IS EXACTLY how MS behaves.

 

THAT IS WHY THEY ARE A MONOPOLY (All the world's cars could end up being Ford's) !

 

That's a FRIGHTENING thought !

 

Seriously though, look at APIs, JAVA, NETSCAPE, Realplayer etc etc etc etc (the list is large).

 

We have/had the best under our noses, but MS just want to spoil the party by being a Bully.

 

And to who ever said that MS don't charge too much for their products, I'd say that over the years I've paid over $1000 for UPGRADES to Office. How much has it REALLY changed ?

 

PS Before anyone says, no I'm not pissed off that MS are that rich and I'm not !

[BladeRunner 0]

Ah, but by using your analogy, what would there be to stop say another company designing a chemical formula similar to petrol, that is compatible with 'the car' and be sold cheaper?

The public would then be able to look at the two products and decide which one was best.

If it turned out that 'petrol' was the better product than the new one, then people would vote with their feet.

 

That is how we stand now.

Office 2000 was not cheap.

Lotus (IBM) & Wordperfect (Corel) had products released that were similar to MS Office.

Yet, when you look at all three packages next to each other there is no competition, the MS Office bundle is the best of the lot.

So it costs more than the others, people don't just go by price.

Why should MS be 'taken down a peg or two' for releasing the better product?

IBM could have had the OS market, they release OS2 Warp which did everything that Win95 could do, but a good 18 months earlier.

They could, if they had marketed the product properly, have taken a big chunk out of MS's market share.

However, once Win95 was released and it was discovered that 95% of applications/games & hardware were supported under Win95 as opposed to the 50% under OS2 Warp the public voted with their feet again.

 

Microsoft aren't to blame for their 'monopoly' status it is us, the paying public who are at blame.

You want to fine anybody / split them up, it is every member of the human race who ever bought a MS product at fault, not MS for releasing the 'better' product onto the market.

[lager_brains 0]

LOL (I can see this analogy is going to get out of hand !!!!)

 

BUT already we are nearly ALL driving Ford's !

 

So by making the cars AND the Petrol, they (MS really) can control things just how they (MS) like it.

 

If someone brings out a competitive fuel, they can change their cars to run bad on it (with the aid of a Service Pack - at the next routine service of course !) so we go back to Ford's fuel !

 

Seriously Bladerunner, EVERYWHERE I've read, Wordperfect is better than Word, Quicken is better than Money, Netscape is better than IE, Realplayer is better than Media Player, Linux/Unix/Mac is better than Windows etc etc etc.

 

BUT MS has market share.

 

Anything good/better comes out, they buy it and then what happens to it ?

 

I'm not saying MS hasn't done anything for PCs, of course not, I'm just saying that WE don't have as big a choice or freedom of choice, or don't have the best possible set-ups because it isn't always in MS's interests that we do.

 

BTW, I want to refine my analogy; Ford make cars, supply petrol and own the VAST majority of Petrol Stations (Ford just bought them all) !

[donald 0]

im not into cars or know much about them but When Henry Ford first made the car (You can have any colour as long as its black) did the goverment complain then that he had a monopoly? NO. It is just because MS have lots of money that the goverment does not like them (probelly pay too little in taxes )

[lager_brains 0]

Exactly Donald, they didn't complain because Henry didn't have a monopoly; he made cars and others made fuel. So others could join in and make cars also.....

 

MS however make the OS AND they make software.

 

By making OSs they CAN and they HAVE dictated HOW WELL software runs on their OS and which ones can run BEST.

 

That's your/my loss.

[donald 0]

thats not what i meant and Ford did/does own Petrol Stations evan back then, they also own warrantie services and Garages so to my mind that is a monopoly.

[lager_brains 0]

Yes, but we're talking MS. Their OS are on 95% of the worlds PCs.

 

Henry didn't own 95% of all gas stations/garages !

[BladeRunner 0]

I disagree with the 'competitors products are better than MS's' statement.

 

Netscape can't hold a torch to IE5, Netscape still has bad java implimentation and it's habbit of incorrectly displaying valid HTML tags.

Suprising though it may seem, IE is actually a lot closer to the official 'HTML standards' than a lot of the other browsers out there.

 

Quicken better than Money - no doubts here at all, totally agree.

 

Wordperfect Perfect Office better than MS Office - I don't agree on this front either.

In my last job but one I had to look after PC's with Perfect Office on, due to the way Corel licensed it to government sites, the whole site with 200+ people on were legal for about £50.

However, it was a general pain to look after, if you think MS Office has problems you should see Corel Wordperfect Office - it's a nightmare!

 

OS's - This is where this whole crazy court cases started.

If there was a valid alternative on the market people would look at it, evaluate it and if they felt it was as good and/or better they would use it.

There isn't, so why exactly is that MS's fault?

Going back again, how could it be deemed to be Ford's fault if Mr. Renault or Mr. Vauxhall either couldn't make a car to save their lives or the car they produced just wasn't as good as Mr.Ford's?

 

MS OS's are on 90% of the world's PC's because nobody else has released a product that can compete.

IBM had their chance with Warp2, LINUX has it's chance now, but until they can seduce hardware manufacturers, application writers and games houses over to their platform it will be the same fate for it - it will be lost in time.

Thankfully LINUX does have a server application ability, OS2 didn't.