Open standards
Microsoft denied this would happen. Brian Arbogast, vice president of Microsoft's personal services division, said there can be no lock-in because HailStorm is based on open standards such as XML and Soap. "The way these services will get ubiquitous usage is through open protocols and open access," he said. And Brian Valentine, senior vice president of Microsoft's Windows division, also said the company was committed to XML, Soap and other Internet protocols.
On other fronts, observers suggested that Microsoft has reduced the restrictions it imposes on its manufacturing partners and has accepted the inevitability of open standards and interoperability. Friend and foe alike said this is because it is being forced to by market conditions. Carl Ledbetter, chief technical officer at Novell, whose One Net strategy is competing head-on with Microsoft's dot-Net plan, argued that Microsoft is resisting change. "Its behaviour has changed, but only in a very small way. We now have multiple operating systems, and any browser will get you to the Web. Microsoft has realised this and is adapting its strategy accordingly," Ledbetter said.
Sam Patterson, chief executive of software component supplier Component-Source, a Microsoft partner, said Microsoft has become more flexible in the context of contract negotiations. "There's a lot more room for negotiation in the contracts we work out with them now," Patterson said.
Intel's Gelsinger said relations with Microsoft are better than at any time over the past decade, but areas of friction remain. "We support Linux, which is obviously a threat to Microsoft and a point of contention between our two companies," he said.
However, Ken Wasch, president of the Software and Information Industry Association (SIIA), a US IT trade group, argued that Microsoft's business practices have not changed at all. Microsoft's vehicle for exercising monopoly power remains its manufacturing partners, which are "no more free today than they were three years ago", Wasch said. The SIIA, which has 1,200 members including AOL, Apple and Novell, said that from a contractual basis, Microsoft has not liberalised its business practices to permit competing technologies. "From a technical basis, Microsoft continues to aggressively pursue the tying of products to one another, creating the inescapable conclusion among users that they ought to have its products from the back office to the browser, because if they don't, it will cause a significant deterioration in performance," Wasch said.
Sun and AOL have said they will lobby the Department of Justice and the attorney general to scrutinise Microsoft's business practices in the antitrust case under review. Legal experts do not expect it to be broken up. "The Court of Appeals could avoid some vexatious issues about market definitions and which facts to review by reversing and remanding the case to another District Court judge on remedy," said Stuart Gerson, an antitrust expert and head of law firm Epstein Becker & Green's PC national litigation practice in Washington. "Once there, a negotiated settlement is quite likely."
Allegations that dot-Net and HailStorm are being designed to tie users to Microsoft products could be presented to a District Court judge as further evidence of the need for a strong remedy against Microsoft if the case is remanded, legal experts said.
Some observers believe that by embedding Passport authentication technology into its core products and services, then launching products such as HailStorm on top of it, Microsoft is repeating the anticompetitive practices of the past.
Others noted that since the antitrust case began, Microsoft's dominance has not diminished. They argue that the power it wields in the operating system, Internet browser and office application markets has grown strongly. "I don't believe Microsoft has changed at all," said Michael Sherwood, IT director for the city of Oceanside in California. "Microsoft doesn't open up its operating systems or other technologies enough, then they invite other companies to come over and develop products on top of Microsoft technologies. Those other companies are always at a disadvantage."
