The funniest thing about the whole antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft was
watching how Microsoft’s detractors continually talk out of both sides of their
mouths. Even professionals writing in the computer industry often seem like
they just don’t get it.
Take web design guru Jakob Nielsen (please). At his site’s Spotlight section, Nielsen briefly outlines Microsoft’s new ClearType technology, which
supposedly makes text easier to read on monitors. Nielsen reports that:
A Microsoft manager is quoted as saying that ClearType will be available
next year “for all Microsoft applications.” The Anti-Trust folks should look
into this. If ClearType is made available for Microsoft applications and not
integrated fully into the operating system, then that is the final kiss of
death for any independent software developers. Nobody wants to spend 10% more
time reading their email, their spreadsheets, their documents – or web pages,
for that. So once ClearType becomes prevalent, nobody will use any software
that doesn’t have it.
Has Nielsen been asleep over the past few months? The antitrust trial specifically
sought to prevent Microsoft from integrating something like ClearType into the
operating system with the claim that by integrating something like ClearType
at the OS level, Microsoft was harming developers who might come up with their
own technologies to do the same thing. The entire Justice Department case against
Microsoft is implicitly predicated on the notion that if Microsoft is allowed
to embed something like ClearType at the OS level that will discourage innovation
by making it unprofitable for other companies to work on their own software
to make computer text easier to read.
And as Nielsen inadvertently demonstrates, this is stupid since it puts the
government in the position of making a wide range of close calls about software
since it makes judges and lawyers responsible for deciding what should go in
an OS and what should go in an application.