By Austin Modine in Mountain View for The Register. This story has
been reproduced with permission.
It says this will not make consumers' lives more difficult, as
they would simply be asked to insert an OS DVD when they first
power the system.
The institute has submitted a policy report to the European
Commission as an attack on Microsoft's dominant position in the OS
market. It hopes the EC's success this month with the Court of
First Instance upholding anti-trust charges against Microsoft will
embolden the Commission to take further steps.
"There is no meaningful competition between operating systems
for commodity computers," wrote Alex Singleton, President of the
Globalization Institute. "Microsoft's dominant position is not in
the public interest. It limits the market and has slowed technical
development to the prejudice of consumers."
The institute argues while that PC vendors and component
manufacturers must compete on styling and brand reputation, none
are the sole choice for consumers. Intel battles with AMD, hard
drives come from Seagate, Hitachi and Western Digital, various
memory makers scuffle amongst themselves, etc.
"But on the software side, the general customer, who walks into
a PC World or PC City, is not able to purchase a commodity PC
without automatically paying for Windows," said Singleton. "The
result is that consumers who, given the choice, would opt for a
cheaper operating system, find themselves automatically buying the
market leader."
"Misguided laissez-faire"
Windows dominance translates into extra cost for almost every EU
business, The institute argues. In addition to the price of
purchase, companies also pay hiked support costs to patch
vulnerabilities that "have plagued Windows systems".
"In America, misguided supporters of pure laissez-faire try to
claim that Microsoft's monopoly is good for consumers," Singleton
told El Reg. It's a proposition that only a blinded
ideologue could support. Laissez-faire, unlike the free market, is
an ideology that doesn't work — if you want to see it in action,
you just have to look at the disaster that is Somalia."
Singleton said Microsoft's dominance has meant higher prices,
less innovation and more computer crashes. "How can someone who
supports free and open markets defend that?"
"Some people say operating systems are a natural monopoly
because it would be expensive and confusing for people to have to
deal with more than one system," Singleton said. "I don't agree.
With more competition, open file formats and protocols would become
the norm, and important innovations in one system would quickly
become standardized across different systems. We see this already
to a huge degree with different distributions of Linux."
Last week, Microsoft lost its appeal against European Commission
charges of anti-competitive behavior. After the verdict, European
Commissioner Neelie Kroes said she hoped to see a lowering of
Microsoft's 95 per cent market share. Her spokesman later clarified
that she merely meant that once the abuse has been removed and
competitors are free to compete, the consequence of that is to
expect Microsoft's market share to fall.
© The
Register 2007
Disclaimer: We hope you find OUT-LAW’s content useful. It’s prepared by the lawyers at Pinsent Masons. Please remember, though, that it’s intended as general information only. It’s not legal advice. If that’s what you’re seeking, please
contact us. See also: our
full disclaimer
