Your article “Microsoft lashes at suit, government lawyers” (Business, Nov. 12) was both pleasing and alarming.
I am pleased that the Department of Justice is finally cracking down on Microsoft’s questionable business practices. At the same time the blatantly false propaganda that Microsoft creates to defend its attempt to force users of Windows 95 to also use Internet Explorer alarms me.
Microsoft claims that installing a web browser is no different from an automaker installing a radio. But Microsoft is not the computer equivalent of an automaker. Microsoft does not even make computers. It only makes a component of computers–soft-ware. Microsoft is trying to tell computer-makers that in order to ship computers with Windows 95, they also have to include Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. This is like your car engine not starting unless you have a Microsoft radio.
The problem with using Microsoft’s strength in the operating systems market to sell Internet Explorer is that it gives them unfair advantage in their competition with Netscape. Internet Explorer and Netscape should succeed on their own merits. Microsoft claims that Justice Department meddling is stifling the creativity of the computer industry. Actually, Justice is trying to protect the competition that drives much of the innovation in the web browser market.
Competition between Microsoft and Netscape forces them to continue to release new and presumably better web browsers. The competition drives prices down (both companies offer versions of their browsers free). This happens because either browser may be substituted for the other. If consumers do not like one, there is a viable alternative. Forcing Internet Explorer to be bundled with Windows 95 damages consumers’ right to choose.
