How many companies and livelihoods were ruined in the process? With the exception of cancer, you can look at anything today and argue it's good because there has been some benefit. I ask, "but at what cost?"

Oh, ok, I suppose cancer helps keep the population down. So if cancer has its good points, I suppose Microsoft does too.

Where would we be today if things had gone down differently? I expect software developers would have rallied together to establish open standards and the world would be a better place today. Oh well.

Posted by: JS on June 11, 2002 12:46 AM

 

Now I am not pro-Microsoft, but you must realize that before them everything to the common users was all DOS to them. MS took the Apple GUI and gave it to the world. Rightly or wrongly they did standardize the way we interact with our POC.

Is it the most efficient?, Is it in the total interest of the user?

does it matter when the average computer user had nothing to compare it to. It's like being given bred and water and being told it is milk and honey....you don't know the difference because you have never had milk and honey.

What MS have done is a great marketing job.

Posted by: JB on June 11, 2002 12:21 PM

 

You miss the point. A standardized GUI would have evolved without Microsoft. We could possibly have enjoyed open standards, an open OS and free competition today. Oh, what might have been...

To say Microsoft succeeded because of marketing indicates complete ignorance of everything uncovered in the antitrust trial.

Posted by: on June 11, 2002 01:00 PM

 

I respect Microsoft for what they created at first. I don't respect Microsoft for what they have to done to everyone, generally "controling" all aspects of our current day computers, shutting down a lot of small businesses, etc.

Posted by: Matt Rhodes on June 11, 2002 03:15 PM

 

Microsoft didn't give us a standard. IBM did. Microsoft just gave us lower prices.

IBM made PCs instead of Mainframes possible from a business perspective. Without IBM, businesses may have gone down that road eventually, but it sure wouldn't have happened as quickly as it did.

Microsoft, because they owned the rights to virtually everything that made a PC a PC, was able to convert PC hardware into a commodity that could be purchased from any number of vendors. This lowered prices, but it also allowed Microsoft to operate in some frighteningly predatory ways.

Posted by: Will on June 11, 2002 06:13 PM

 

My understanding of the anti-trust trial was that it was focused on the browser issue and the bundling of such in an OS software...not the development and advancement of a GUI that common folks could use as a replacement to DOS commands.

Posted by: JB on June 11, 2002 06:48 PM

 

The anti-trust trial revealed how a company can push itself up by pushing everyone else down. Its GUI became the standard at the expense of innovation.

Posted by: on June 11, 2002 07:41 PM

 

I wish people wouldn't post anonymously, but anyway...

The Microsoft trial is about abuse of monopoly power. It's about using their market dominance to dictate terms to vendors, and various other things.

But - and this is important - to abuse its dominance, it needed to HAVE dominance first. So the GUI was already well-established before Microsoft did any of the things it's accused of.

Posted by: MadMan on June 12, 2002 12:59 AM

 

Lots of things could have changed in the last 10 years with MS out of the picture.

Posted by: on June 12, 2002 09:51 AM