Microsoft's bully status

Joseph Nocera of the New York Times considers whether Microsoft has changed in the five years since the conclusion of its U.S. antitrust trial: Google This: Is Microsoft Still a Bully? Among other things, he points out the serious threat posed by Google, and considers how Microsoft might have responded before the antitrust trial:

In the old days, said Tod Nielsen, a former Microsoft executive, the company would have raced to add some kind of quick-fix Internet search "functionality" to Windows. "And we would have found a way to attack their business model, too," he added. That this has not happened is, to my mind, the most powerful evidence that the company's behavior has been tempered by the antitrust trial.

On the other hand, it seems quite likely that when Longhorn is finally rolled out -- currently scheduled for late 2006 -- it will have some kind of Internet search feature. It will be easy to use, seamlessly integrated with Windows -- and will have been seriously vetted by the lawyers, so that it at least minimizes any potential antitrust problems.

Here's what Windows chief Jim Allchin had to say on that same subject when I asked him about it a few weeks ago:

Q: To what extent will Microsoft's MSN Web search be integrated into Longhorn?

Allchin: There are many powerful Web searches out there, and we're going to have to have an open platform where people can plug those in. I don't think that all the t's are crossed and the i's dotted, but we have an open environment there in XP, and you can just expect that to continue in terms of being able to plug in your favorite search.

The question is how far we can go for everyone, not just one, for being able to visualize some of that information in more natural ways. Sometimes you want to see Web search results integrated into what you're doing, and in other cases you don't, and so we have usability work going on trying to figure that out ... but it will end up to be an open environment.

Q: Is that an antitrust consideration, not wanting to favor MSN Search within Windows?

Allchin: You'd have to ask the attorneys on that, but we had an open platform, and we're going to continue to have an open platform. We have a consent decree which says a certain set of things, but this sort of goes beyond that. You know what we did with Media Player. (The company included competing music services alongside its MSN Music store within Windows Media Player 10.) We think that's good for consumers, so it's more from that perspective.

Nocera also discussed his story on NPR's Weekend Edition. Joe Wilcox weighs in on the subject of Nocera's story in this post on the Microsoft Monitor weblog.

Posted by Todd Bishop at May 24, 2005 08:38 AM