Steve Ballmer in Windows 1.0 advertisement

Summary: Even stranger questions arise regarding T3's lawsuit against Linux-powered mainframes

YESTERDAY we wrote about Microsoft's rather obvious role in lawsuits against IBM because IBM deploys GNU/Linux. This strategy has a long-running history and Comes vs Microsoft exhibits (on IBM) might say a lot more.

A reader has just shown us this interesting new analysis.

Microsoft invested in T3 in November of last year. Friedman declined to discuss specifics, though a Securities and Exchange Commission filing from December shows a $1 million investment in T3, alongside a credit facility worth up to $6 million, courtesy of an unnamed entity.

Remember what other company has just received funds from very mysterious places in order to sue Linux? That's right, SCO [1, 2, 3]. But we'll get back to it in the next post. Slashdot too has just pointed out Microsoft's role in the T3 lawsuit.

Microsoft has long claimed that the mainframe is dead, slain by the company's Windows monopoly. Yet, apparently without any mirror nearby, Microsoft is now complaining through the Microsoft-funded Computer & Communications Industry Association that not only are mainframes not dead, but IBM is so anticompetitive that governments should intervene in the hyper-competitive server market. The Wall Street Journal reports that Microsoft is worried that the trend toward cloud computing is introducing competition to the Windows franchise, favoring better-positioned companies including IBM and Cisco.

Microsoft doesn't like the lack of market share in search and in servers. "White Knight" Microsoft shall save humanity from these "evil monopolists" (because you can't use anything by Google, can you?) using lawsuits by proxy -- an art that it masters. Speaking of Google, Microsoft uses politicians against it, as well as a variety of other attack vectors. See for example:

• Microsoft's Anti-Google Whisper Campaign
• Lobby Which Google Said Was in Microsoft's Pocket Wants Google's Street View Shut Down
• Microsoft and Politics (Against Google)
• Microsoft Plays Hardball in Politics

Matt Asay wrote a short assessment to explain why Google will continue to defeat Microsoft.

However painful it might be, Microsoft, like the print media that Ballmer eulogizes, must change. Microsoft must get online, and much faster than is comfortable. Otherwise it stands to lose to Google which has no built-in dependency on on-premise deployments.

It ought to be added that Google -- just like IBM -- has been sued due to Microsoft's pressure (in the past and present). Microsoft openly encourages publishers to sue Google. It is likely that because Google is not a community project gardened by volunteers Microsoft need not hide its role quite as carefully. ⬆

"...Microsoft wished to promote SCO and its pending lawsuit against IBM and the Linux operating system. But Microsoft did not want to be seen as attacking IBM or Linux."

--Larry Goldfarb, Baystar, key investor in SCO