IP: Gates is screwing up again.

[David Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>]

> Date: Wed, 05 Apr 2000 09:16:29 -0400
> From: Bob Metcalfe <metcalfe () IDG net>
> To: David Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>
> CC: Bob Metcalfe <metcalfe () IDG net>
>
>
> Dear Dave, for IP if you want:
>
> What PCs were to DEC's Ken Olsen, antitrust is to Bill Gates -- his downfall.
>
> Gates doesn't yet realize that what goes for start-ups does NOT go for
> multi-billion international corporations with 90% market share.  Big
> companies have to walk on eggs, be careful to prosper by serving
> customers, not damaging competitors.
>
> Freedom of choice among competing alternatives (FOCACA) must be
> preserved.  And Microsoft has been stepping in FOCACA for a decade now.
>
> Antitrust should not have taken Gates by surprise.  He certainly knew
> about Sherman and Clayton when he was growing up -- 10th-grade social
> studies, right?  Gates ceratinly saw how antitrust oversight of IBM
> allowed him to start and grow Microsoft -- remember when IBM was forced
> to unbundle hardware and software and services?  DOJ's antitrust suit
> did not bring IBM down, but it allowed Microsoft, Intel, and many others
> to be there when IBM inevitably dropped the ball.
>
> Gates was warned about his company's antitrust misbehaviors as early as
> 1991, in a column I wrote for Computerworld.  Antitrust watchdog Anne
> Bingamen warned him again later, only more forcefully, in a consent decree.
>
> Gates blew us off, mischaracterizing DOJ's concerns as being
> anti-innovation.  It's not really about integrating browsers into
> operating systems, as Gates keeps claiming.  It's about lying how
> "integrated" Explorer was into Windwos 95 -- not.  It's about exclusive
> distribution agreements that lock competition out. It's about tying and
> dumping.  It's about buying competition.  It's about pre-emptive
> announcements of products that never ship to freeze competitors out 
> of markets.
>
> In contrast, Intel handled FTC inquiries well, and they went away.  But
> Gates botched his dealings with DOJ, and they didn't.  He seems to be
> following the Clinton strategy of deny and delay, not to mention lie.
> Gates forgets that he does not have Clinton's shield of political
> popularity.  Rich people don't do nearly as well in Washington as demagogues.
>
> Justice has e-mail in which Gates says his settlement with Bingamen did
> not change Microsoft's behavior one bit.  It's not nice to fool with
> mother nature.
>
> I once wrote that Gates would come to his senses about antitrust, as he
> did marvelously about the Internet, which was his previous potential
> downfall.  But I was wrong.  No antitrust epiphany.
>
> I predicted Gates would be removed as CEO, and should be for all this.
> He was a month later, and replaced by Steve Ballmer.  But now that
> Microsoft's antitrust case is on the front burner again, it's not
> Ballmer who's out front, but Gates.  He's screwing up again.  His board
> should tell him to sit down and shut up, and let the company come to
> terms with Justice, sooner the better
>
> The worst part of this is NOT that precious Microsoft will be damaged by
> the big bad government.  The worst part is that Microsoft has given the
> feds and lawyers everywhere a reason to get their nose into the
> high-tech tent.  Technology industries, like automobiles and brest
> implants and tobacco and guns before, are now fair game for the undue
> processes of marxist luddite law.  For THIS I cannot forgive Gates.
>
> /Bob Metcalfe, InfoWorld