User:Martin Hogbin/What not to add to Microsoft

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Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson stated that Microsoft's dominance of the x86-based personal computer operating systems market constituted a monopoly, and that Microsoft had taken actions to crush threats to that monopoly, including Apple, Java, Netscape, Lotus Notes, RealNetworks, Linux, and others. Judgment was split in two parts. On April 3, 2000, he issued his conclusions of law, according to which Microsoft had committed monopolization, attempted monopolization, and tying in violation of Sections 1 and 2 of the Sherman Antitrust Act.

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The Justice Department and the states believe that Microsoft has used its monopoly in operating system software to protect its dominance and eliminate competitors. The government says that in the long run, consumers will be harmed, because there will be less competition and fewer choices.

More specifically, the government contends that Microsoft has engaged in actions to preserve its Windows monopoly that violate antitrust laws.

A federal jury in San Diego has ordered Microsoft to pay $1.5 billion to Alcatel-Lucent in a patent dispute over MP3 audio technology used in Windows.

At the Web site Windows7Sins.org, the Boston-based FSF lists the seven "sins" that proprietary software such as Windows 7 commits against computer users.

They include: Poisoning education, locking in users, abusing standards such as OpenDocument Format (ODF), leveraging monopolistic behavior, threatening user security, enforcing Digital Rights Management (DRM) at the request of entertainment companies concerned about movie and music piracy, and invading privacy.

The strategy's three phases are:
 * 1) Embrace: Development of software substantially compatible with a competing product, or implementing a public standard.
 * 2) Extend: Addition and promotion of features not supported by the competing product or part of the standard, creating interoperability problems for customers who try to use the 'simple' standard.
 * 3) Extinguish: When extensions become a de facto standard because of their dominant market share, they marginalize competitors that do not or cannot support the new extensions.

The U.S. Department of Justice, Microsoft critics, and computer-industry journalists claim that the goal of the strategy is to monopolize a product category. Such a strategy differs from J. Allard's originally proposed strategy of embrace, extend then innovate both in content and phases. Microsoft claims that the original strategy is not anti-competitive, but rather an exercise of its discretion to implement features it believes customers want.

In March 2004, the EU ordered Microsoft to pay €497 million ($794 million or £381 million), the largest fine ever handed out by the EU at the time, in addition to the previous penalties, which included 120 days to divulge the server information and 90 days to produce a version of Windows without Windows Media Player.

Microsoft takes on the free world

Teen fights to keep MikeRoweSoft.com

Microsoft (along with Google, Yahoo, Cisco, AOL, Skype, and other companies) has cooperated with the Chinese government in implementing a system of Internet censorship. Human rights advocates such as Human Rights Watch and media groups such as Reporters Without Borders criticized the companies, noting for example that it is "ironic that companies whose existence depends on freedom of information and expression have taken on the role of censor."

China’s system of Internet censorship and surveillance, popularly known as the “Great Firewall,” is the most advanced in the world. In this 149-page report, Human Rights Watch documents how extensive corporate and private sector cooperation – including by some of the world’s major Internet companies – enables this system of censorship. Research was performed through interviews and extensive testing of search engines in China, and includes 18 screen shots to illustrate examples of censorship. The report vividly illustrates how various companies, including Yahoo!, Microsoft, Google, and Skype block terms they believe the Chinese government will want them to censor. 

Microsoft is also accused of locking vendors and consumers into their products, and of not following and complying with existing standards in its software. Total cost of ownership comparisons of Linux as well as Mac OS X to Windows are a continuous point of debate.