SJ Mercury: Rivals brace for bolder Microsoft

[ Thanks to George
Mitchell for this link. ]

“Silicon Valley companies are bracing for an even stronger,
emboldened competitor in Microsoft as a federal appeals court panel
appears headed toward overturning the court order that would have
split it in two.”

“Microsoft’s dominance of the personal computer operating system
market has held steady at about 90 percent of the market since the
government’s antitrust case began. Microsoft, which previously
leveraged that dominance in the PC market to control the Internet
browser market, is now going after Web audio and video players,
cell phones, TV set-top boxes and computer servers.”

“Rivals are afraid that the software giant’s fierce competitive
tactics, which the government charges violate antitrust law, will
get even tougher if the company isn’t broken up. They say that will
hurt innovation and competition.”

“They have not really fundamentally changed their behavior at
all,” said Ed Black, president of the Computer and Communications
Industry Association, which represents Microsoft competitors that
include Novell, a networking software maker. “Nothing that has
happened . . . can blunt their core monopoly except government
intervention.”

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