Bill Gates’ Way or No Way
We don’t have enough automobile companies, but at least we have a few. We have, what, hundreds of TV channels? Probably enough. At the grocery, I counted 11 brands of toilet tissue. I can choose from who-knows-how-many long-distance providers, which proves that sometimes enough is too many. I have my choice of at least six manufacturers of aloha shirts (you can never have enough of those), dozens of religious groups, a couple of kinds of tooth fillings, about 69 cuisines and a lot of different kinds of bikes (mountain, beach, cruising, racing).
The spice of life, the soul of pleasure--old sayings about variety. Blah, blah, blah.
Then we have Microsoft. No choice, no spice, no soul, no pleasure.
Ours is not a McDonald’s world, because there is Burger King or Wendy’s or others. It is a Microsoft world because there is little else, and less all the time.
Now, I’m not an authority on antitrust law, such as it may be. But I’ve come to realize that whatever these laws may say, they are prefaced with a choice: to enforce or not to enforce or enforce halfheartedly? How else could we have gotten ourselves into this position?
I believe that when alien beings finally pay us a visit, the circumstance that will baffle them most is how a nation that is so wholly devoted to the ideals of commercial competition allowed itself to become enslaved by a single brutish company. At the dawn of a new era, the nation that presumes to lead the Information Revolution is itself led around by the nose. How can this be?
Long ago, the hammer and chisel yielded to charcoal, which led to the quill pen, the pencil, the ballpoint, the typewriter--the purposes of which, to record and share information, have now been sucked into the force field of Microsoft.
I have no answer for our alien visitors. America in the year 2001 is a curious place.
It is possible, although emotionally wrenching, for Americans to change spouses. Sometimes willingly and sometimes not, we change careers. If we persevere, we can change our bad habits. Thanks to the marvels of plastic surgery, we can change our appearance and our dimensions.
What we cannot change, it seems, is Microsoft’s grip.
Microsoft was accused and found to be a monopoly. Millions of dollars and years of courtroom time were spent to determine the obvious. Still, the argument drags on.
Microsoft says it was victimized by dimwitted authorities who don’t understand computing.
But what’s not to understand when one company controls 95% of the market for the basic operating system that gives life to our PCs?
Put that on your Excel spreadsheet and see what it looks like.
Microsoft continues to field its fancy lawyers and PR lackeys to stall for time. It double-talks its customers. Meanwhile, it is redoubling its resolve to expand control over the revolution of communication. What the company cannot co-opt, it suppresses. Goodbye, Java.
Technical arguments abound, I know. But technical matters don’t interest me. My computer is a toolbox with which I do my work. Seen in this light, Microsoft is a lesson. Microsoft is where free enterprise goes if left to its own devices: a tyranny as absolute as could be envisioned by Lenin. Ruthless and inescapable control.
