Microsoft vs. The Justice Department: Playing Monopoly (1998-99)

5,2 тыс. просмотров 3 года назад (26 марта 2023 г.)An 18-minute documentary of Microsoft's infamous monopoly regarding its rivalry with Netscape in the browser market and the Justice Department, and how Internet Explorer was just starting to integrate with the shell of Windows. There's some cool footage in this tape, including rare shots of Steve Ballmer chanting about beating the competition, and stock footage of the manufacturing process for Windows 95 retail copies inside a big factory warehouse. It seems the motivation for Microsoft's bundling of IE everywhere according to this video comes from Netscape hoping to bypass their monopoly of the Windows platform someday, even going as far as to pay OEMs to remove Internet Explorer from their machines altogether. It's especially funny how they drag the IE desktop icon into the Recycle Bin thinking that removes the program entirely, even though it's just a shortcut (despite the icon having no shortcut arrow next to it). An interview with Nathan Myhrvold, former CTO of Microsoft, shares his side of the story of how he thinks Netscape was unfairly pushing their browser onto OEM machines, at a time when they had a large portion of market share, and proclaiming that not having Internet Explorer integrated would "stagnate innovation" of the Windows platform, even though it has shown to have been innovated mostly fine without the need of a piece of software tethered to the operating system over the course of 12 years (1983-1995). Joel Klein, a lawyer heavily involved in the antitrust case, begs to differ with his notion, as his stance on how monopoly works is that it isn't illegal until you try to take advantage of the fact by deliberately doing shady tactics to have more prominence in the marketplace, as both Microsoft and Netscape are guilty of to their own extents. I could go more into the legality discussion from this tape, but I'll just leave it at that, as there's other things I'd rather be doing than dissect the structure of the law regarding monopolies. This tape was distributed by Films for the Humanities & Sciences and produced by The News Hour with Jim Lehrer in 1998, with this particular copy being a 1999 reprint with seems to add information at the end scrolling on the screen in front of a very cool Windows 95 flag. I couldn't find any details about if this segment ever aired on TV back then. The company that distributed this actually still has this segment for sale on their page ($80, really?), though mine seems to be a cleaner copy than theirs is. I can't link to their page because apparently YouTube wants me to use a phone to "verify" that I'm legitimate, which isn't happening.…ещё