Talk:United States v. Microsoft

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[edit] "An historic"

It's only "an historic" if you can't pronounce "historic" correctly ;-) ... - Khendon 10:29 Nov 4, 2002 (UTC)

It always seemed to me that "an historic" may survive in England but has died out in the United States. And since this is an American subject ... — Toby 07:19 Nov 17, 2002 (UTC)

As far as I'm aware, "an historic" is incorrect. — Timwi 23:48, 4 Mar 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Factual errors according to Ed Felten

Ed Felten comments in his blog that there are several factual errors in this entry: http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/archives/000674.html

I posted a comment there asking him to use this Talk page to explain the problems, so we can work on them. - Brian Kendig 14:30, 5 Sep 2004 (UTC)

"So far, so good. But now we come to the entry on the Microsoft case, which was riddled with errors. For starters, it got the formal name of the case (U.S. v. Microsoft) wrong. It badly mischaracterized my testimony, it got the timeline of Judge Jackson's rulings wrong, and it made terminological errors such as referring to the DOJ as "the prosecution" rather than the "the plaintiff". I corrected two of these errors (the name of the case, and the description of my testimony), but fixing the whole thing was too big an effort."

Lotsofissues 13:43, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I saw that when he posted it in his column - all the issues he named have been addressed, and any more he cares to mention will be addressed. - Brian Kendig 23:42, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] NPOV dispute

I believe that the presentation and commentary of the news links, as well as the last paragraph before "External Links", are rather POV. However, I do not trust my own familiarity with this case to fix this. It would be nice if someone could clean this up. — Timwi 23:48, 4 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I've edited those parts of the article to be, in my opinion, NPOV. - Brian Kendig 23:22, 7 Mar 2004 (UTC)
I've removed the NPOV dispute header, as I can't find any justification for it. I'm not claming that the article is perfect, but it seems to cover the main points fairly competently, and do not understand Timwi's objection. An objection on NPOV grounds needs to state what is objected to, not just object in general terms. If you still object, Timwi, you need to say why you object. Tannin 23:34, 7 Mar 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Quote attribution

If somebody wants to include quotes, which is text surrounded by "quote marks" the proper form is to attribute in the same sentence the source of the quote.

"Bill gates was rude in court"[1] is simply a slanderous allegation, it is not an attributed quote. If the editor is that convinced the quotes are relevant, the editor may browse to the internet sites listed before they are altered, determine who offered the statements and in what context, then report that information to Wikipedia. The proper style is "Bill Gates was rude in court." said (name source here).

Tannin's claim that the characters "[1]" hyperlinked to a commercial magaizine's web page comprise attribution of a quote is specious at best. If tannin replaces the unattributed quote, I will demand the not-NPOV header be restored. Hatemongering is not a fair way to tell the news. Reality check

I've attributed the quotes directly in the Wikipedia article. Please let me know if you believe more should be done (or feel free to make the edits yourself). Brian Kendig 15:01, 11 Mar 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Historic case? and bias

I'm not sure that "historic" is really the right word to describe this case. Something can't really be historic if it happened only a few years ago. Plus, I think that "historic" is a bit of a loaded word anyway. I tried to think of a better word, but actually, I think it would be best to remove it altogether.

Also, some of the parenthetical comments in this article seem to be a bit biased, especially those in this paragraph:

Microsoft claimed that the merging of Microsoft Windows and Internet Explorer was the result of innovation and competition, that the two were now the same product and inextricably linked (despite the fact that a separate version of Internet Explorer was available for Macintosh), and that consumers were now getting all the benefits of IE for free (a questionable assertion, since its development and marketing cost still had to come from somewhere and may have kept the price of Windows higher than it would otherwise have been).

I think it would be more appropriate (and more NPOV) like this:

Microsoft claimed that the merging of Microsoft Windows and Internet Explorer was the result of innovation and competition, that the two were now the same product and inextricably linked, and that consumers were now getting all the benefits of IE for free. Those opposing Internet Explorer's inclusion in Windows countered that it was not really the same product, since a separate version of Internet Explorer was available for the Mac OS. They also asserted that IE was not really free and that its development and marketing costs may have kept the price of Windows higher than it would otherwise have been.

Does anyone have any comments about this? Josh 00:08, Oct 28, 2004 (UTC)

I agree. First off, you're right that "historic" isn't quite the right word here; I removed it, but is there a better word? "important", maybe? Or "landmark"? Or "much publicized"? Secondly, I think that's a good rewording of the para; I made a few changes to that and edited the article. Feel free to edit my edit. - Brian Kendig 15:59, 28 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Okay. I put in "widely publicized" where "historic" used to be. That should give readers an idea of the importance of the case, but in a neutral sort of way. Also, I like the changes to the paragraph. They make it a bit clearer. Josh 17:19, Oct 28, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Opinionated Paragraph

The last paragraph is a stated opinion with no supporting material and should either be removed or updated to reflect “proof” or further discussion. “The outcome of the antitrust case has served to chill venture capital investment in technical startup companies, for fear that Microsoft will notice the startup's niche and starve off the new company to protect Microsoft's market.”

Agreed, and removed. Though I wish there were a way to state in the article, "Hey, look, Microsoft has proven that whenever it sees a little startup trying to make money off a great idea, it's proven that it's able to steal the idea, drive the startup out of business, drag the litigation out for years long past any chance of the company being saved, and get off with a slap on the wrist - so where's the motivation for anybody to try to bring a clever new idea to market any more?" Brian Kendig 15:14, 23 Jul 2004 (UTC)
There must have been surveys done on this. "According to a YouGov poll, the number five concern of new software development startup companies is competition from one of the established players, notably Microsoft". Or something of that ilk. Hard to find, though. Martin 00:58, 7 Sep 2004 (UTC)
As a venture capitalist who has spoken directly with other venture capitalists about Microsoft, I can say with authority that the paragraph is factually accurate. Not to mention its widely reported in the media. (I'm going to log out to post this though. Like ProComp members, I fear the backlash Microsoft has inflicted in the past on its detractors.)

[edit] Move to United States v. Microsoft?

I propose that we move this article to United States v. Microsoft. -- MIT Trekkie 14:39, Dec 27, 2004 (UTC)

  • It sounds like a good idea, as long as there is a redirect from "Microsoft antitrust case" as that is often used to refer to the case. Josh 20:56, Dec 28, 2004 (UTC)
Good idea! Done. - Brian Kendig 23:46, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)


[edit] Errors and Facts

This information is inaccurate in a number of ways.

For example, it claims that I produced a second video tape without Dr. Felton or government attorneys being present. This is incorrect. I demonstrated what I stated in my written testimony was correct and Dr. Felton and government attorneys watched me do it -- right into the middle of the night.

The original video tape was edited by the Microsoft legal group -- not me -- just to set the record straight. I was not even present during the filming of the first tape. But I had personally performed the operations proving what was in my testimony so I knew my written testimony was correct. But, I was not involved in the production of the first video tape. I had assumed that the legal group followed the steps perfectly, but instead they had taken short cuts and ended up with an edited tape.

You can check the court transcripts to prove this.

jim allchin

Jim, methinks thou doth protest too much. The import of the article -- that the first video had been edited and that the microsoft claim of a slow-down was dropped after that late-night session -- is correct. Does the entry contain a little anti-MS spin? Yeah, probably. But like it or not, the videotape debacle was not one of the shining moments for MSFT. -- Gnetwerker 07:35, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

I got rid of most of the Anti-MS spin in the last edits. I looked quite a bit while for court documents containing allchin's statements/deposition but couldn't find them. Anyone know where to find them? Ryan Norton T | @ | C 16:22, 28 September 2005 (UTC)


For the record, I provided the court documents to Ryan Norton soon after the last post. -- Gnetwerker 07:46, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Major edits

Anyway, I made some major edits/improvements the article. Basides some obvious tense and other problems, here's a summary:

  1. Rewrote the first paragraph for style and merged in related points from other intro "paragraphs".
    Got rid of "It was also suggested that the bookmarks, search engine, and other links and software provided by default with Internet Explorer were guaranteed to have very high visibility to users.". This doesn't make any sense - what was wrong with the links? As is it reads like someone trying to insinuate something that the person can't really prove with existing facts. Would be nice if this was added back with proper context and verifyability.
    "widely publicised" isn't really true. PARTS of the case were widely publicised, but most didn't reach beyond the computing media. If there's a word this better that would be good. "historic" (the previous) is downiright silly. A better choice might be something like "in a case that garnered national media attention" - somewhat more accurate
  2. Killed a redundant sentence in the second paragraph about them bundling IE in order to destroy competitors etc. - already stated in the first paragraph, no need to repeat.
  3. "resulting in consumers being exposed to serious security hazards and other harms" nonsensical removed sentence (and rather redundant too).
  4. got rid of the timeline - contained a lot of unneccesary and unrelated tidbits such as the EU case (which really deserves its own page) and the many companies with independant suits. I did merge in the relevant stuff from the list that wasn't already there, however
  5. General prose tighting

Ryan Norton T | @ | C 02:34, 28 September 2005 (UTC)


[edit] Criticisms

I removed this para:

"It should be noted that with the emergence of affordable broadband connections and the distrbution of complete Linux kernel operating systems over the internet, most popular distributions of Linux are packaged with a web browser (for example, Ubuntu and Red Hat). However, it should also be noted that removing these web browsers in Linux are much easier (and safer) than removing Internet Explorer from Windows.:

This is based on the false premise that the mere bundling of the browser was at issue -- it is not and never was. Bundling of a secondary product with a monopoly product is a violation of anti-trust laws, so the bundling of browsers with Linux systems, which do not have "market power", is immaterial and misleading. -- Gnetwerker 21:11, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Result of case

I think the lead should tell us what the outcome of the case was. -- MarkBuckles 17:26, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Antitrust Movie Relation?

this seems to have some correlation to the movie Antitrust (i forget the year it came out in). In the beginning, Gary Winston (the fictitious Bill Gates) is accused of the same crime stated in the case report, of having an unfair monopoly over the computer industry and not promoting healthy competition.

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