Antitrust regulators seek more commitment from Microsoft

WASHINGTON-- Microsoft has made some progress developing a set of documents required as part of its antitrust consent decree, but the work could be accomplished much more quickly if the company took on a less grudging attitude, state and federal antitrust regulators said Thursday.

The comments were made during a status conference meeting held to asses Microsoft's compliance with the consent decree.

In June, regulators said that the "overview documents" Microsoft prepared did not sufficiently enable third-party licensees to create software interoperable with the company's operating systems. Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly agreed that Microsoft had to create a set of additional "system" documents that would give more information on the interaction between the protocols in a number of scenarios.

Microsoft has been working with a court-appointed technical committee to create a set of templates for the system documents. So far, they have reached an agreement as to what the first template--which encompasses most of the system documents--should look like.

However, the complicated process of finalizing the templates is taking longer than anyone expected. As stated in a status report released last week, the technical committee had to submit its own template design to Microsoft to work with because it was concerned the Redmond, Wash., company's template was not well-designed.

"I have to express my concern with this attitude that they're behaving as a volunteer," said Jay Himes, the antitrust bureau chief for the New York attorney general's office. "It fosters this sort of grudging commitment to get the system documents done."

He said the technical committee's implementation group has been called off all other tasks to support the template effort, and the committee dedicated more than 150 hours to meetings about the templates just last week.

"What we have today is the (technical committee) and its staff spoon-feeding the world's biggest PC company," he said. "Something about that just isn't right."

Representatives for Microsoft said the company is very committed to finishing the templates and the system documents. The company has assigned a significant number of senior engineers on the template project, said Bob Muglia, Microsoft's senior vice president of servers and tools.

"We understand that is a requirement," said Charles Rule, an attorney for Microsoft. "The delays have not been as a result of Microsoft taking a lackadaisical attitude,"

Still, Kollar-Kotelly questioned Microsoft's commitment.

"I do appreciate that these things are complex, but I think it's interesting the (technical committee) is able to do what's necessary and bring Microsoft along, and not the other way around," she said.

Muglia said the development of the system documents will undoubtedly go through next year, but that he could not present a final schedule for the project until the final template is completed. He said he could present a final schedule at the next status conference, slated for late January 2009.

Kollar-Kotelly urged all parties to resolve their differences to finish the system documents by November 2009, when the consent decree is set to expire.

"Something's missing here, and I'll leave it up to you to figure out what it is," she said.

[Penguinisto]

Well... if they really want to get MSFT's attention, file a decree request w/ the judge calling to split off MS Office (incl. Visio, Project, SharePoint, etc) into its own independent corporation, with threats of peeling off other divisions if there's no sufficient movement on the original consent decree.

I'm very sure that Ballmer and crew would quickly become very eager to comply with the original consent decree in a very enthusiastic fashion at that point...

[anythingbutmicrosoft]

Move along, there is nothing new to see here.

Microsoft has always, and will always continue to, flip everyone the bird and continue doing whatever they please. In defiance of any laws, regardless of the harm they have caused society, nothing will ever change due to the lack of a backbone in our legal processes. Nothing short of Bill Gates spending at least a token amount of time in jail for his crimes will begin to resemble appropriate punishment.

[benjaminstraight]

Good luck

[medezark]

And when will they start investingating Apple? I'm tired of reading about microsoft being raked over the coals while Apple gets away with the same thing and worse.

[Penguinisto]

MSFT has been convicted of abusive monopolistic practices. Apple has never seen the inside of a courtroom for any such thing.

If you think they need to be, there's nothing stopping you from hiring a lawyer and petitioning the DoJ to investigate them.

[Vegaman_Dan]

Penguinisto wrote:

"MSFT has been convicted of abusive monopolistic practices. Apple has never seen the inside of a courtroom for any such thing. "

Really? Reality would seem to disagree with you. I'd be careful with such broad sweeping generalizations- not when Apple is all too familiar with the insdie of a courtroom for exactly such practices.

http://www.wired.com/gadgets/portablemusic/news/2007/09/wma_apple

http://news.soft32.com/norway-tells-apple-change-itunes-or-face-court_3334.html

http://www.itnews.com.au/News/43967,itunes-court-battles-continue-for-apple.aspx

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,2845,2329219,00.asp

http://www.macnn.com/articles/07/11/07/ipod.itunes.lawsuit/

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/wireless/phones/2007-10-11-iphone-att-apple-monopoly_N.htm

That's just a random sampling of the 1,008,000 hits on Google for Apple Monopoly Court Case in which Apple is the defendant after being accused of being a monopoly and using that position to control the market and discourage / punish competition. If you doubt it, go look yourself.

Now then, you were saying?

[MaggieRed]

Isn't this all about XP? Isn't that a dead OS?

I believe MS did this purposely to allow the OS to die and have another on the market and not have to comply with the court rulings. Figures.

[robvme]

Uh actually, it goes back to Windows 95 and IE 4.0 vs Netscape....It is really old and tired.

[maverick_nick]

I really do feel sorry for Microsoft.This is a company who just wants to compete and build great products, but their efforts are now hampered by silly regulatory bodies. They can't even ship Windows with Windows Live, which can be viewed as an essential part of Windows. This is ridiculous! This is like the best Football team in the league being forced to share their playbook with the other teams - insane.

[t8]

You obviously have no idea of Microsoft's past. Do some research about their illegal practices first before making such a naive comment.

[clumpkin]

ROFLMAOPIMP!!!!

You could take that act to Vegas.

[CrashPad63]

What can be said about the behavior of MS and its leaders early on? They where very ambitious and hard charging. They saw an oppurtunity to grab marketshare and they would go for it. They would "squash" rivals underfoot most intentionally some from collateral projection of the impact.
Now MS is faced with sceptism, and in some cases scorn on about anything they do to open up and move foward. Too bad some of the harshest critics wont really see the true genius that is MS. Besides the point though, Ms will have to over sell its openess at times to get anything across of their new found openess

[wrs388]

If Microsoft is willing to be open as you say they are, then why is Microsoft still stalling when releasing documents to create software interoperable with the company's operating systems? What you consider to be a genius, I consider illegal, and monopolistic. It's obvious you don't know what genius and open means.

[fdunn3]

Oh give it up already. Apple and Linux will be the next dominant desktop the way MS is headed anyway.

Why don't you start focusing on Google/Yahoo now. You are spending more taxpayer money than it is worth.

[robvme]

Hey, I got an idea. Let's have Microsoft move out of the US and take all of its 50,000 US employees and outsource them to a country that is a little more business friendly. That would be great....we would be rid of the big monster Microsoft that everyone just so hates and despises and let them operate out of Vietnam or China. I think it is a fantastic idea, Redmond would implode, the 11 or so other jobs created for every MSFT FTE job would go to another country and we would just be done with them.

Then we can go after Apple, then RedHat, then IBM, then Oracle and then the next US success story, while foreigners get our jobs and reap the rewards of having all of our technical companies and know-how. Why not, shouldn't we ship them to the same place all of our manufacturing jobs are? I mean this antitrust thing goes back to Windows 95 and the browser wars, a 1000 years ago by technology standards, the government is doing such a great job spoon feeding Microsoft with all of their help and technical expertise.

Hey, maybe the feds can open their own software company and have a consulting arm and hire us all, yeah, the government can do everything right, they know what's right for us, I think we should just submit to the fact that we really can't take care of ourselves and let the government manage it all.

Yeah...let's split up Microsoft, make it imossible for them to do business and drive em out of town. Great idea. I love when the government takes care of me, they are just so competent and well meaning and have all of the expertise to run the private market. They did a fantastic job getting water and other goods to Katrina victims. Big bad Microsoft should pay for all of those billions they have made and they have deep pockets, lets take some of it away and give it to some of the fantastic government programs we have that contribute so much to our GDP. C'mon let's stop whining and get these Microsoft hooligans that are making us all miserable with their success

I am itching to get to the next company that has the audacity to make it big in the US and punish them too. Let's get going with this.

[Penguinisto]

@robvme: sure - and watch MSFT promptly lose any and all US gov't contracts, the EU would be even more stringent than the US could ever hope to be, and I doubt that Japan would take 'em either.

'course, China would happily host them.

IOW: Get real - even in the most fevered MSFT fanboy fantasy, MSFT won't get a nasty case of spite and leave the US.

[dhavleak]

Penguinisto -- robvme has a very valid point.

Antitrust law makes no sense. Consider, say a contract by which MS might tell an OEM "you can distribute windows pre-installed -- as long as you don't distribute any other OS on any machine you sell". Well -- that's bad business, and that should be made illegal. There's no reason it should be legal at say 30% market share, but illegal at 90%. In fact, even Collen Kollar-Kotelley herself won't be able to tell you exactly at which point it becomes illegal. So if MS was doing business this way, how the hell are they supposed to know at what point their business model became illegal?

Same thing applies to protocols and file formats. Proprietary protocols and formats hurt interoperability. This is true whether you're at 30% of the market or 90%. Why not rule on disclosure of protocols -- and apply that to the entire industry? The current approach means that MS has to open up all of it's stuff, but the rest of the industry keeps acting in a harmful way -- until you have the next big behemoth that needs to be taken down.. This nonsense makes no sense.

And I can't believe I'm saying this, but I actually do sympathize with MS on this. The EU wants stuff documented one way. The US DOJ wants it some other way. The EU and Korea mandate that MS needs to provide stripped down versions of windows (without media player etc.) - and MS complied with those rulings -- but nobody bought those damn versions! Customers actually didn't want them! What a colossal waste of time in court, and engineering resources to create a product that nobody wanted to begin with! And then to top it off, the US DOJ judge says she doesn't appreciate MS's attitude.. what does she want? Should they just turn around and drop their trousers every time somebody wants to make them re-re-re-document some protocol?

[wrs388]

Microsoft is in fact doing business as you say it is. Proprietary protocols and formats are hurting interoperability and that's what Microsoft have been hiding behind for the last 25 years. In 1998 they were convicted of being a monopoly, but when George Bush became president they completely dropped the case and let Microsoft go free. The EU, Korea, and DOJ aren't doing anything wrong so you have no reason to sympathize with MS. They just want Microsoft to open up part of their system specs and Microsoft have been grudgingly doing so.