Comments

• twitter

  2011-06-24 23:51:20

  Microsoft boosters are trumpeting news of the start of an FTC investigation of Google. This idiot article seems to have all of the talking points. Blooberg inflates the issue too. Microsoft has been pushing for such an investigation for at least four years but is a huge hypocrite that should have been broken up a decade ago. An anti-trust lawyer has interesting things to say about the move:
  
  

  what many supporters of an antitrust investigation of Google do is to intentionally conflate the interests of consumers with the interests of competitors of Google. They are indeed distinct and separate; mistakenly intertwining the two to justify an investigation of Google is a fundamental twisting of facts and a misuse of longstanding antitrust law.
  
  According to the Supreme Court, antitrust laws exist not for the benefit of corporations, but for the aid of consumers. In one case, Spectrum Sports, Inc. v. McQuillan, the court stated this point clearly and powerfully:
  
  "The purpose of the [Sherman] Act is not to protect businesses from the working of the market; it is to protect the public from the failure of the market. The law directs itself not against conduct which is competitive, even severely so, but against conduct which unfairly tends to destroy competition itself."

• Dr. Roy Schestowitz

  2011-06-25 00:07:57

  I am staying out of this because Google is rich enough to handle its own cases. I am unwilling to do what Groklaw did for Apple (in the Psystar case) as we would lose valuable time fighting more urgent matters.
  
  Techrights contains at least half a dozen articles showing quite clearly how Microsoft lobbied for the above, often by proxy. Explaining this would be repetitive, an exercise in futility in a way. If someone (perhaps you) wishes to track how this story unfolds, please do send articles for publication. For now, I choose to focus on software patents, then Linux FUD (Google FUD is not quite the same, despite overlap). We also used to cover Microsoft's lobbying for antitrust against Apple.

• twitter

  2011-06-26 17:17:56

  Thanks, I'll keep an eye on it and stick them into daily links. The overlap is important because Google is showcase of free software use and a tremendous technical accomplishment. Microsoft fights this profitable use of free software as it fights all use of competing software. The issue might be repetitive but that's only because Microsoft continues to do the same nasty things. It is not futile to call them out for it, or at least point to sources that get things right. Commercial use of free software is an important right and the one that scares Microsoft most. Microsoft's ability to manipulate the US government has important implications as does the US government's inability to act on software patents and Microsoft's obviously anti-competitive behavior.