Bonum Certa Men Certa

How History Gets Warped -- Not Forgotten -- to Conceal Microsoft Violations

Coffee book session



Summary: More book-burning phenomena and how it affects perception of Microsoft

SEVERAL DAYS ago we wrote about attempts by the Microsoft-faithful to rewrite history as a by-the-way in new articles. We gave as an example Enderle performing an act of Netscape revisionism and there are many similar examples that we presented this year [1, 2, 3]. Here is an exercise in blaming Netscape for its 'failure'. The following news article totally neglects to mention anti-competitive conduct from Microsoft, for which there was a prominent conviction in court. Novell is also mentioned.



Novell made the same mistake. Both companies bought second-rate competitors to Microsoft in a number of market segments, just to get in the game. It spread precious resources too thin.

Instead, they should have focused their resources where they had a lead, and a chance to win — Netscape in Browsers, Novell in Network software. History tells us that the upstart must focus and win decisively in that first battlefield, before moving on. Or they almost certainly will be crushed, like these two once high-flying companies.


The mistakes were not strategic. Microsoft violated the law, so legal harbours were all the victims had left and the only reasonable 'strategy'.

In a similar vein, there is a reversal of roles in the press, which pretends that Yahoo! is now begging for Microsoft's help. The press says nothing about the fact that Microsoft's deliberate agitation and destruction was responsible for internal shakeups and shakedowns that led Yahoo! where it is today. See for background:



Now that Microsoft has managed to overthrow the leadership of Yahoo! and install a Microsoft partner (Bartz), things change a lot.

Unless there is some major glitch, there might finally be a search and online advertising deal struck between Yahoo and Microsoft at long last.


Will the story about Microsoft's corporate harassment of Yahoo -- as publicly told by Jerry Yang -- be remembered at all?

"[Microsoft's business strategy is] copy the product that others innovate, put them into Windows so they can't be unplugged, and then give it away for free."

--Oracle Corp Chairman Larry Ellison



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