Microsoft Maths

An interesting article on Forbes’ website discusses a rivalry between Microsoft and Google. Want to know who they named the winner? Apple. If you didn’t quite get the math in that equation, let’s go over it together. Google brought a suit to the U.S. Justice Department complaining that Microsoft’s newest operating system, Vista, has a desktop search embedded within the program that is difficult to remove, essentially forcing Vista users to use the search engines instead of any others, namely, Google’s. While most analysts are calling the claim bogus and backing the argument up with carefully detailed instructions on how easy it is to remove the search function in question, should the user care to do so, the case is bringing back flashes from Microsoft’s shaky legal past.

In the early 1999, amidst accusations that the company had evolved into an ugly monopoly fit to take on and take out the competition, Microsoft was ordered to be split up by a federal judge. Bill Gates, however, went on to win an appeal, exchanging Microsoft’s freedom from a breakup for an agreement never to hinder rivals who build applications that can run on Windows. Enter Steve Jobs.

Forbes say, “For starters, Apple can now do all sorts of things with its operating system that are off limits for Microsoft.” And they have. From the introduction of iTunes, a software program for buying and organizing personal media that now comes built in, standard, with every Mac, to an Apple-brewed web browser, Safari, to embedding a search program, Spotlight, into a version of their operating system OS X.

One of the most buzzed about announcements at a recent World Wide Developers Conference (WWDC) on June 11 was the introduction of a Safari for Windows. Does Bill Gates have to stand for that?

The answer is yes. Microsoft is in a position, albeit probably not of a voluntary nature, where they have to keep their doors open to any Apple product that Jobs throws at them. At the same time that Apple ports a new browser into Windows, Microsoft is seeking to play the blame game too: Nate Anderson at Ars Technica points out that antitrust accusations fly both ways: Microsoft publicly objected to Google's $3.1 billion buyout of online ad system DoubleClick in April (see BusinessWeek.com, 4/14/07, "Google's DoubleClick Strategic Move"). The company charged that the deal would give Google as much as 85% of the online ad market. At the time, Microsoft said the buyout raised concerns about competition.

"Google has been playing the same game, but it has conducted its campaign in secret and directly with the federal government," writes Anderson. While they squabble, however, Apple is taking the cake. Especially with the upcoming release of the much anticipated iPhone, it seems as though most other tech happenings have fallen to the wayside. As Brian Caulfield at Forbes said, “Maybe Microsoft would have been better off breaking itself up.”