Washington (dpa) – Make no mistake: The U.S. Department of Justice’s
recommendation that Microsoft be broken up into two distinct companies – one
for
operating systems and the other for application software – may become
reality.
If it does, consumers will face a host of questions and uncertainties.
The best way to answer these is to look point-by-point at the Justice
Department’s assertions about the proposed break-up of the world’s largest
software company.
Assertion 1: Breaking up Microsoft will “stimulate competition,” according to
U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno.
The Justice Department believes that splitting up Microsoft will, for the first
time, allow Microsoft’s applications developers – the folks that make
programmes
such as the popular Office suite of productivity applications – to develop
software for other, competing operating systems.
Joel Kline, Assistant Attorney General for the U.S. Department of Justice, said
as much when he suggested in a news conference that as a result of the proposed
break-up, “Office developers will be able to develop for Unix,” a competing
operating system.
This sounds reasonable, but will former Microsoft developers ever do this? The
question is very debatable. Currently, as Microsoft’s famous chief software
architect and former chief executive officer Bill Gates would point out,
Microsoft already develops applications for competing operating systems,
including the Macintosh OS and Unix.
While it’s true that splitting off Microsoft’s applications business would
theoretically allow the company’s developers to be less Windows-centric, the
realities of the software development business will not change: Development
efforts will always focus first on creating programs for dominant operating
systems, since those are the ones used by most people and those are the most
lucrative to write for.
It is true, however, that currently no one can seriously
consider moving to a more “untested” operating system such as Linux if certain
mainstream applications – such as Office programs – will not run under Linux.
So
to the degree that Microsoft’s developers would begin coding for other
operating
systems, the breakup could, eventually, have the effect that the Justice
Department is after – and consumers would, eventually, benefit.
Assertion 2: The breakup will “promote innovation,” according to Reno.
The reasoning behind this statement is that because Microsoft’s operating
system
and applications businesses are so inextricably entwined, there is little
incentive within the company to innovate in ways that would lead the
marketplace
away from the Windows-centered universe we all find ourselves in.
What are some of these innovations that aren’t being explored? Office
developers
could, for example, be more heavily involved in developing their software for
Web-based computers that do not use the Windows operating system, or for
computers that use Sun’s competing Solaris operating system. Currently, there
is
actually an incentive within Microsoft not to push too heavily in either
direction, since doing so could arguably detract from the Windows hegemony.
Are consumers better off when there’s more innovation? Up to a point. One has
to
remember that wherever there’s the type of innovation that the Justice
Department is thinking of, there’s also the attendant confusion over standards.
Remember, for example, when there were five or six competing word processors,
and it seemed that everyone you knew used a different one? WordPerfect couldn’t
read WordStar files well at all, and of course XyWrite couldn’t touch Word
files.
Assertion 3: Breaking up Microsoft will “give consumers new and better choices
in the marketplace,” Janet Reno insists.
There’s little doubt that a breakup of the software behemoth would give
consumers new choices, as outlined above. Would the choices be better, though?
Really, only time will tell. It’s clear that now, in a Microsoft-dominated
computer world, we have fewer choices in word processors, spreadsheets,
databases, and many other applications than we had five or ten years ago.
So Microsoft stole market share. And the company’s resulting size and power
have
clearly given it a lasting advantage in the software marketplace: it has been
able to hire the best programmers, use its installed base to discourage other
companies from entering Microsoft- dominated areas, and dictate the direction
of
an entire industry as much by decree as by example.
So now we’re in a computer world with Microsoft at the top. If the company is
broken up, though, consumers should not expect to see any major changes within
the software industry any time soon. If Microsoft is broken up, Windows will
still likely be the dominant operating system on the PC, and the industry may
already be in the process of moving to a more Web-centered computing experience
where Windows may not be as dominant. This could happen with or without a
break-up of Microsoft.
