The deputy general counsel for Microsoft says they have learned their lessons on dealing with the US government in antitrust matters. Now he has some advice for Google on the same subject.
Marshall Phelps, the corporate vice president and deputy general counsel, said that if Microsoft had negotiated sooner with the US Department of Justice, it might have avoided further trouble. The company has had a running battle with regulators for more than a decade, and in 2002, it signed a landmark settlement with the US government that called for more stringent oversight of the company's practises.
"Had Microsoft been a little quicker to give in on this, that and the other, [it] wouldn't be in the same pickle," Phelps said.
Phelps, who spoke at the Red Herring East conference here, said "one of the problems companies get into [is] when they don't realise how powerful they are and how powerful they are perceived as being." He then directed his comments at Google, one of Microsoft's main rivals in online search and applications.
"Google is going to face the regulatory burdens that Microsoft faced. It's going to be legislation by bad example. Something awful is going to happen, and legislators will run off and draft something that deals with privacy issues," Phelps said.
Phelps had some suggestions for companies facing antitrust regulators.
"Discretion is the better part of valour, and it's better to be a bit more humble in the face of regulators because they are never going to go away," Phelps said. "I don't care how many good lawyers you have or how much money. The regulators still win. That's just the rule. All the more reason you want to be cooperative and make the government think they won. You want to say, 'Yep, you won. We'll change our practises.'"
Microsoft is following that advice, changing its own practises and "desperately trying" to make regulatory peace with the European Union, Phelps said.
Google may not agree with Phelps' statement. The company recently filed a complaint with a federal judge, arguing that changes Microsoft has agreed to make in its Vista operating system fall short of addressing concerns that its computer search function puts Google and other potential competitors at a disadvantage.
But Google was rebuffed, at least for now, by the federal judge presiding over Microsoft's antitrust compliance. Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly said she didn't plan to comment on that filing and deferred to government regulators to alert her if they decide that Microsoft does, in fact, need to make more changes than the ones they already agreed to implement.
They can't learn trust from MS, but certainly how to take advantage of a market position to ram crap software down the general publics proverbial. Google however have managed to keep that at bay.... thank goodness. I reakon that all software companies know now that a bad reputation will get you nowhere.