DOJ wants extension of Microsoft antitrust judgment

I see no difference. MSFT has aged as a corporate entity, become more bloated, less able to keep a lid on any and all competitors. Other than that, nothing's changed.

It's a bit late to repair the damage, too. If you don't give resumes as "documents" in "Word" format, you basically can't get a new job in the USA. Mid-level managers regard putting data in "Excel" spreadsheets as tantamount to getting a blessing from a priest. Upper-level managers seem to regard "sharepoint" as the best thing since sliced bread.

I don't understand any of these choices: none of them allow you to re-use the data in a file without expensive, expensive proprietary libraries. "Word" doesn't allow you to do a line-by-line diff of one version to another.

Small, medium and large businesses continue to give MSFT a free pass on quality and usability.

SSDD. If it weren't for FOSS, there would be zero competitive pressure on Microsoft, and the computing landscape and Internet would be in even worse shape. If that's possible.

> Other than that, nothing's changed.

I disagree. Microsoft was a monopoly in 1998. They're no longer a monopoly. Linux has matured and Apple is a far stronger competitor. For most users, Windows was the best choice in 1998. I tried Linux a year or two later and there were just too many rough edges. These days I buy a laptop at Best Buy, run an Ubuntu live CD, and everything just works, including wireless.

It's true that Office formats are required for a lot of things. That, however, is ignorance on the part of Microsoft's customers. Anyone wanting an alternative has little trouble finding one, and that is why Microsoft is no longer a monopolist.

Quoting:These days I buy a laptop at Best Buy

And Microsoft counts it as a Windows sale.

Quoting:It's true that Office formats are required for a lot of things. That, however, is ignorance on the part of Microsoft's customers.

They'll get my resume as a PDF or on a dead tree. The only other thing they'll get from me is a lecture about untrusted data.

> And Microsoft counts it as a Windows sale.

But from an antitrust perspective, the important thing is that a suitable alternative exists. The makers of laptops might choose to sell Windows but Linux would be perfectly acceptable if they wanted to go that route.

The perfect test of whether Microsoft is actually a monopoly was Vista. If Microsoft were a monopolist, they would have forced Vista on everyone, and that would have been the end of it. They were unable to kill off XP. The entire netbook market came into being after Vista was released, even though Vista won't run on netbooks. That is very strong evidence against Microsoft being a monopolist.

Is there such a thing as "attempted monopoly" or "conspiracy to monopolize"?

bigg --

"Is a monopoly" isn't correct. "Has a monopoly" would be more proper, both legally and factually.

The antitrust suit alleged that Microsoft had a desktop monopoly and, pretty much, they still do. Even the competition, such as it is, makes the point:

Apple doesn't even try to go after the broad consumer market, satisfying itself with sales of high margin "designer" computers. Linux is -- well, free.

Microsoft's control of the consumer and corporate desktop continues to make it very difficult for meaningful competition to arise.

Fortunately, their plans to gain a similar monopoly in the server room, on mobile phones, etc fell apart.