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John: On Thu, 19 July 2001, "John Taylor" wrote: > > On Wed, 18 July 2001, "Tom Liotta" wrote: > > > > I think Chris handled the response well enough, so I'll ask a question in > > the opposite direction. How does keeping them together benefit the > industry? > > I believe that for every answer to this, there's a parallel harm against > > competing developers that can be demonstrated. So why should anyone want > > them together? > > > > > Think of it this way: you have *one* shot at an effective remedy. Now, do > you try to implement a solution that addresses the problem, or do you simply > break the company up because it seems like it won't make the situation any > worse than it already is? I don't think that the breakup is THE remedy; it's only one of the remedies. This particular remedy addresses the situation where MS could use undocumented (or correctly documented) interfaces to give their applications group unfair competitive advantage. Other remedies are included, mostly changes to business practices such as requiring PC vendors to unfairly promote MS products or risk losing contracts. The breakup focuses on the OS<==>App problem and pretty much only resolves that single problem area. Although it certainly would be possible for collusion, etc., to continue, a couple elements would make that difficult. First, I've understood that ownership would not continue as it has. Gates, for example, could choose which side he wanted to continue with and would sell his ownership (shares) of the other. I believe this would be true in most major owner cases. And I imagine there'd be restrictions for some years to come on how many shares any of them could buy in the other company. Second, keeping such collusion activity secret would be significantly more difficult. Not only could a simple disgruntled employee in either company blow the whistle any time, but records of intercompany phone calls, e-mails, meetings, etc., would be duplicated on two different systems, probably required to pass through intermediate channels, etc. An independent e-mail server anywhere between them could be sufficient for e-mail records for example. You can bet that the FTC, the SEC and who knows what other agencies would be running checks for years as part of the settlement. The document(s?) that would eventually outline all the specfics would likely run to 100s or 1000s of pages. It wouldn't be a simple case of move some employees to another building and nobody will ever check. In any case, I'm almost certain the breakup was a remedy for specific transgressions, not THE single remedy for all. It's just the one that got all the news. Tom Liotta -- Tom Liotta The PowerTech Group, Inc. 19426 68th Avenue South Kent, WA 98032 Phone 253-872-7788 Fax 253-872-7904 http://www.400Security.com ___________________________________________________ The ALL NEW CS2000 from CompuServe Better! Faster! More Powerful! 250 FREE hours! Sign-on Now! http://www.compuserve.com/trycsrv/cs2000/webmail/ +--- | This is the Midrange System Mailing List! | To submit a new message, send your mail to MIDRANGE-L@midrange.com. | To subscribe to this list send email to MIDRANGE-L-SUB@midrange.com. | To unsubscribe from this list send email to MIDRANGE-L-UNSUB@midrange.com. | Questions should be directed to the list owner/operator: david@midrange.com +---
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