“A judge’s ruling that Microsoft Corp. wields monopoly power
may be too late to alter the high-tech industry in one key
respect: Competition over the way the world accesses the
Internet is already moving beyond its Windows-based
technology, observers say.
In the two years since the Justice Department brought its
antitrust lawsuit, competitors have become emboldened to begin
looking for alternatives to the Microsoft operating system that
runs on more than 90 percent of the world’s personal computers,
analyst Rob Enderle of Giga Information Group said.
‘Microsoft may well be in a fight for its life anyway,’
Enderle said Saturday. ‘A lot of the advantages they had to dictate
to their partners and their customers were changed during the
course of the trial.’ “