Your past editorials on the Microsoft antitrust trial appear to proceed on the fearful premise that the country will go into an economic nosedive if it doesn’t get the benefit of Microsoft’s innovation. Your June 9 piece, “Microsoft: The end of the beginning,” flows through this same narrow channel in its criticism of Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson.
I’m sure the same kinds of dire predictions were made by AT&T’s defenders when the Justice Department sought its breakup. Nevertheless the competitors who previously were stifled by AT&T’s policies have done well for the telecommunications industry in this country. If you remember, before that, the diversity of telephone equipment and service was pretty much only what AT&T wanted it to be.
Is the country better off without the innovation of competitors Microsoft has stifled? Microsoft’s public relations machine would have you believe it. But given the history of large monopolies and the human nature that drives them to increase their grasp, you should be praising Judge Jackson, not vilifying him.
