No need to add to the Microsoft - Yahoo speculation frenzy, as plenty of others will do that for the remainder of this week (though if anything pops into mind, I’ll certainly talk about it in these pages).  Instead, I’ll return to the topic I had planned to write about last Friday, before news of the deal hit the airwaves like a train running through a concrete barrier, which was: what should be Microsoft’s stance with respect to standards?

The topic was inspired by something John L. Ries, a longtime talkback participant who rarely agrees with anything I say, noted in a comment to a previous post on the subject of Microsoft antitrust oversight. In response to a question asking what it would take for him to stop being concerned about Microsoft and its business practices, he said:

When the primary selling points of MS software are the price/quality/features/terms of the software, instead of “compatibility with everyone else” or “it’s illegal to use competing products”, or other forms of fear, uncertainty and doubt (original meanings of those words), then MS will no longer be a threat to the free market and will no longer require court supervision or consumer boycotts to keep them in line.

First things first, Read the rest of this entry »

Google is throwing down the antitrust FUD in response to the proposed merger between Microsoft and Yahoo. This is getting annoying, not because Google is unique in it, but because other large companies - including Microsoft - have gotten in on the game, too. Microsoft tried to stop the merger between Doubleclick and Google (still pending approval in the EC, approved in the US). I guess this can be considered “tit” for “tat” between two companies scouring the ammunition barrel for everything they can throw at the other.

In my humble opinion, if you don’t want antitrust regulators hanging around your doorstep like angry wasps (and I should think that, these days, Google has reason to fear that as well), the last thing you need to do is keep banging the hive in hopes they might go after your competitors. But oh well…big companies will act like a couple of Appalachian families with a score to settle.

David Drummond, Senior VP at Google, doesn’t explain exactly HOW Microsoft is supposed to do the following. He just, in true passive-aggressive fashion, asks “questions:”

Could Microsoft now attempt to exert the same sort of inappropriate and illegal influence over the Internet that it did with the PC? While the Internet rewards competitive innovation, Microsoft has frequently sought to establish proprietary monopolies — and then leverage its dominance into new, adjacent markets.

How, pray tell, Read the rest of this entry »

I was going to write on another topic related to my recent post on the subject of antitrust and Microsoft. That, however, seems less relevant (for now) given the news that Microsoft is bidding to purchase Yahoo, with the current offer on the order of $44.6 billion.

Suffice to say, Microsoft employees (a group among which I count myself) are abuzz with the news. I always knew that Microsoft was trying to catch Google in the search business, and rumors abounded of Microsoft considering a purchase of Yahoo, a company that dates back to the Internet’s earliest days and was one of the first sites I ever visited when I got on the Internet back in 1994 or 1995 (yes, I’m sure that is late by the standards of some ZDNet regulars).

Truth be told, though search is important, it’s probably the advertisement possibilities and the ability to monetize free product that most attracts Microsoft’s interest. Google could be selling little troll dolls, and Microsoft would be chasing them if Google had found a way to generate ad revenue from the little green monsters. Microsoft is making headway in building its own advertisement network, but the addition of Yahoo’s network would surely energize things. Economics of scale do matter in advertising.

Even so, I was Read the rest of this entry »

Apple recently dropped the price of its Apple TV device by $70.00. The folks at Gizmodo then went to iSuppli for a teardown analysis to determine if it was the result of reduced costs. As it turns out, it isn’t. Apple isn’t exactly taking a bath the way Sony does pushing out PS3 game consoles (a device it loses money on with every sale), but it is earning far less than the 50% margins that are typical for Apple products.

I think its obvious why Apple is doing this. The company that finally bridges the gap between the Internet and the television stands to make a bazillion dollars, while lighting the fire under a revolution that would change completely the way consumers access media content.

As Gizmodo noted in their blog, content has traditionally been the loss leader through which Apple has sold hardware. They never made much money off iTunes, as most revenue went back to the copyright owners to pay for the right to sell their content.

That approach won’t Read the rest of this entry »

Judge Kollar-Kotelly announced yesterday that she would extend to November, 2009 the non-documentation related sanctions imposed on Microsoft in its 2002 consent decree, matching the extension of the documentation provisions she had made earlier in the month. The extension isn’t of the duration for which the State Attorneys-General had hoped - they favored a five year extension - but it is still notable. Reading the subtext, Kollar-Kotelly is saying that Microsoft hasn’t done everything expected of them, but they aren’t as delinquent as the States had argued.

The States argued that the fact that Microsoft is still dominant five years after the signing of the consent decree is sign the sanctions didn’t work. I think the notion that Microsoft’s dominance – a dominance derived from the software markets need for standards,  however derived — is laughable. However, there are signs that trends are heading in useful directions. With Firefox market share in Europe at 28% as of December, 2007, a resurgent Apple, and a Google that regularly bests Microsoft in Internet applications, I should think that Microsoft’s ability to dominate the industry is a thing of the past, as Ars-Technica noted (albeit in a non-committal third person):

The relevance of the consent decree sanctions is somewhat questionable under current market conditions. Apple is enjoying record market share growth, Google’s popularity bests Microsoft in the increasingly important search space, and Mozilla’s Firefox web browser continues to take market share from Internet Explorer. One could argue that innovative business models—like those which leverage Internet advertising and open-source development—have done far more to level the playing field for competition in the technology market than the US antitrust case against Microsoft.

2007 is not Read the rest of this entry »

It was always to be expected that a certain number of iPhone purchasers would go through the trouble of “unlocking” their device so it could be used on any network they want. This involves some work, and though web sites dedicated to the subject abound on the Internet, I always figured that most users would be as interested in customizing their iPhone as customizing their TV.

Clearly, I was mistaken, as reports have revealed that over quarter of all iPhones sold have been unlocked. That article also reveals the motivation for Apple’s willingness to “brick” customized iPhones, or iPhones altered so as to make them work on networks with whom Apple lacks an exclusivity arrangement (AT&T in the United States, O2 in the UK):

The higher number is worrying for Apple because the company receives a cut of AT&T’s iPhone service fees, revenue that carries a high gross margin and has fueled optimism over its earnings potential.

If the level of Read the rest of this entry »

Not that this tops the list of things that matter to geeks, but if you live in Los Angeles like I do, it’s hard to avoid news about such things.

The Director’s Guild of America (DGA) recently cut a deal with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) in a record five days. This matters to the ongoing Writer’s Guild of America (WGA) strike, because Hollywood unions tend to engage in pattern bargaining, wherein one union will follow the broad outlines of the contract previously negotiated by another union. The same sort of thing occurs in the automobile industry, with contracts negotiated by GM often reflected in later contracts negotiated with Ford or Chrysler.

The precise details of the contract would probably bore anybody who isn’t a member of one of the Hollywood unions, but it does have ramifications for the digital revolution. As I explained in a previous blog, Hollywood unions, for all their proletarian protestations about fighting the big bad studios, are part of a system that keeps costs high and helps to keep studios safe from competition. It’s a wide-ranging system that includes copyright rules that have de facto non-existent expiration dates, the net effect of which is to price out of the market smaller studios who can’t afford union-negotiated contract fees or copyright licensing.

The DGA contract Read the rest of this entry »

As reported recently, Facebook has been asked by Hasbro and Mattel to remove the “Scrabulous” game from its web site. Hasbro and Mattel jointly own the rights to the “Scrabble” game, something that most people have at some point in their lives played at least once. Scrabulous was a software version of the game which enabled users to play others across the Internet, and proved quite popular on the booming social networking site.

I never played Scrabulous, but it occurred to me while reading news of the takedown notice that the notion that Hasbro and Mattel “own” the rules of the Scrabble game seems very odd. According to wikipedia, Scrabble was created in 1938 by unfortunately named Alfred Mosher Butts, though it only acquired the name “Scrabble” when a lawyer named James Brunot bought the rights to the game and released it under a new title.

The point to that history is that Scrabble has been around for a VERY long time. When does it reach the level of games like Chess, Backgammon or Checkers, entering the public domain so that anyone can use and reuse it, all the while calling it by the name with which history has bestowed it (versus having to, on trademark grounds, call it by a new name so as not to annoy former trademark owners)? The answer, at least from a legal standpoint, is “not for a very long time.” Assuming that Alfred Butts is treated as the creator according to the “Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act” of 1978 (a man who, as member of the singing duo Sonny & Cher, had a vested interest in such extensions), copyright won’t expire until 70 years after the death of Mr. Butts. As he died in 1993, that means Scrabble could be under copyright protection until 2063.

That just seems Read the rest of this entry »

Some kid in Australia is getting the kind of press that major movie studios would pay millions to acquire, all because he threw a party while his parents were out of town that got a “bit” out of hand. As a teenager, I threw parties when my parents were out of town, too. I remember having to explain a few months after one such party a pile of pull-tabs my mother found under the couch (yes, I am old enough to remember when pull-tabs were common on all canned drinks). Of course, my parties never had 500 attendees, and those who did attend didn’t riot when the cops appeared to break up our illicit gathering (which did happen…once).

So, “Cory the Australian’s” party was a bit extraordinary. Far more extraordinary, however, is that tales of it were carried on major news sites around the world. If a story of a kid in Australia who throws a larg-ish party manages to circle the world many times, that’s a sure sign that technology is breaking down the traditional spatial barriers that lead to strong cultural distinctions. The fact that Cory, save for his accent, would look right at home sitting around a pool in Los Angeles merely enforces that notion.

Globalization is often Read the rest of this entry »

Yes, you heard it here first. Steve Jobs, in front of thousands of awestruck keynote attendees, allowed Kat Von D of TLC reality show “LA Ink” to give him a large, shiny-silver Apple tattoo across his chest. Reporters pressed the stage for comment, but they could only get a few words out of him before the anesthesia took hold, which was preparation for the implantation of fully-functioning eagle wings scaled to accomodate the human frame.  This will allow him to fly around the San Francisco bay area without the assistance of helicopters or private jets.

Okay, things didn’t unfold exactly that way this morning at MacWorld…or for that matter, at all. My version isn’t that far off, however, from all the breathless hypothesizing burbling across the blogosphere since at least last Wednesday. Jobs will announce a new super-lightweight laptop. Apple will start its own music label. Apple will release the “iPod monkey” which, when loaded with songs, will sing them back to you in a screechy monkey voice.

Don’t get me wrong…last year’s MacWorld was absolutely spectacular, as that was where Jobs announced the iPhone…which I still think is an amazing piece of phone engineering. I’m sure they will do something more in the TV space, because that only makes sense given their relationship with content companies and the fact that so many use the iTunes software as the base station to their media lives. The odds of matching the surprise of the iPhone, however, is low…well, unless they ARE really planning to release the iPod Monkey. I would DEFINITELY buy that.

It can’t be denied, though, that I am curious as to what they will announce, which is why I bothered reading all those speculation blogs in the first place. Apple is a company firing on all cylinders, no doubt about it. That wasn’t always the state of things, but it clearly is now. That’s something even this Microsoft employee can appreciate