03.27.10
Revised Microsoft History, Brought to You by Microsoft Boosters
Summary: Microsoft’s past as seen from the eyes on people who make money from Microsoft, courtesy of IDG ‘News’ Service
“Appeasement, said Winston Churchill, consists of being nice to a crocodile in the hope that he will eat you last. At the moment, the biggest crocodile in the world is Microsoft, and everybody is busy sucking up to it,” wrote John Naughton for The London Observer.
Microsoft is like the crocodile that has already eaten many companies while committing heinous crimes and antitrust violations. We can’t go though them today because there is just too much ground to cover. What worries us greatly is that Microsoft has been rewriting the past quite a lot recently. We gave an example just a couple of weeks ago.
“I wonder if it’s as simple as this, that many people are a little afraid of computers, so they felt reluctant to swap in something new until there was a page saying it was OK and nothing would break?”
–Pamela Jones, GroklawMicrosoft’s booster, Preston [1, 2], is doing that again and it gets promoted by Microsoft Nick. They are desperate to pretend that Microsoft has legitimately earned its current position and with so many Microsoft boosters in the press (even in publications that used to say the truth about Microsoft before they got intruded), there is a danger of whitewashing of scary proportions.
Microsoft Nick is boosting Microsoft in many other ways and another Microsoft Nick trivialises the situation with the browser ballots as we addressed it a few days ago. “I wonder if it’s as simple as this,” writes Groklaw in response to Nick, “that many people are a little afraid of computers, so they felt reluctant to swap in something new until there was a page saying it was OK and nothing would break?”
One must not forget the crimes against Netscape and others. People do not choose Microsoft’s browser and if they use it, then it’s because Microsoft previously broke the law and had people associate the “Blue E” with “the Internet” (the BBC perpetuates this myth). Given choice, people do not choose Microsoft, but they are rarely allowed to choose. Despite all of this, Microsoft’s products continue to lose market share. From Reuters we have:
Microsoft’s Internet Explorer has lost market share in major European markets, such as France, Britain and Italy, after the U.S. software firm started to make it easier for European consumers to use competing browsers.
Microsoft’s pledge to allow easier access to rival browsers in Windows by the middle of May, ended a long antitrust dispute with the European Union.
People must remember that Microsoft was forced to do this. It’s not about Microsoft giving opportunities for a diversity, it’s about antitrust regulators responding to Microsoft’s abuses. We are disheartened to see how Microsoft has spun this debate, but then again, the monopolist is controlling media with new companies and appointments involving Microsoft employees (new example in [1, 2]). Those who want an accurate description of Microsoft’s historic role in computing can start here. █
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