“Nearly a decade after the government began its landmark effort to break up Microsoft, the Bush administration has sharply changed course by repeatedly defending the company both in the United States and abroad against accusations of anticompetitive conduct, including the recent rejection of a complaint by Google,” Stephen Labaton reports for The New York Times.
“The retrenchment reflects a substantially different view of antitrust policy, as well as a recognition of major changes in the marketplace. The battlefront among technology companies has shifted from computer desktop software, a category that Microsoft dominates, to Internet search and Web-based software programs that allow users to bypass products made by Microsoft, the world’s largest software maker,” Labaton reports.
“In the most striking recent example of the policy shift, the top antitrust official at the Justice Department last month urged state prosecutors to reject a confidential antitrust complaint filed by Google that is tied to a consent decree that monitors Microsoft’s behavior. Google has accused Microsoft of designing its latest operating system, Vista, to discourage the use of Google’s desktop search program, lawyers involved in the case said,” Labaton reports. “The official, Thomas O. Barnett, an assistant attorney general, had until 2004 been a top antitrust partner at the law firm that has represented Microsoft in several antitrust disputes.”
“The memo illustrates the political transformation of Microsoft, as well as the shift in antitrust policy between officials appointed by President Bill Clinton and by President Bush,” Labaton reports. “Microsoft was saved from being split in half by a federal appeals court decision handed down early in the Bush administration. The ruling, in 2001, found that the company had repeatedly abused its monopoly power in the software business, but it reversed a lower court order sought by the Clinton administration to split up the company.”
“Google complained to federal and state prosecutors that consumers who try to use its search tool for computer hard drives on Vista were frustrated because Vista has a competing desktop search program that cannot be turned off. When the Google and Vista search programs are run simultaneously on a computer, their indexing programs slow the operating system considerably, Google contended. As a result, Google said that Vista violated Microsoft’s 2002 antitrust settlement, which prohibits Microsoft from designing operating systems that limit the choices of consumers,” Labaton reports.
Labaton reports,” Richard Blumenthal, the Connecticut attorney general, declined to talk about the substance of the complaint, or which company made it. But he said the memo from Mr. Barnett surprised him. ‘Eyebrows were raised by this letter in our group, as much by the substance and tone as by the past relationship the author had had with Microsoft,’ said Mr. Blumenthal, one of the few state prosecutors who has been involved in the case since its outset. ‘In concept, if not directly word for word, it is the Microsoft-Netscape situation,’ Mr. Blumenthal said. ‘The question is whether we’re seeing déjà vu all over again.'”
Much more in the full article here.
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