Thus, you have heard much mumbo-jumbo about Microsoft's need to "innovate." My wife, being an owner of Microsoft stock, even got a letter exhorting her to join a "Freedom to Innovate Network" and to send letters to Congress. All this simply detracts from the truly amazing amount of detail and understanding that Judge Jackson demonstrates in his verdict . He dissects the Microsoft case so thoroughly that any attempts to refute his statements have to take the form of amorphous calls for innovation.
The 411th and 412th (the last two) paragraphs of his statement of fact are worth repeating here:
Many of the tactics that Microsoft has employed have also harmed consumers indirectly by unjustifiably distorting competition. The actions that Microsoft took against Navigator hobbled a form of innovation that had shown the potential to depress the applications barrier to entry sufficiently to enable other firms to compete effectively against Microsoft in the market for Intel-compatible PC operating systems. That competition would have conduced to consumer choice and nurtured innovation. The campaign against Navigator also retarded widespread acceptance of Sun's Java implementation. This campaign, together with actions that Microsoft took with the sole purpose of making it difficult for developers to write Java applications with technologies that would allow them to be ported between Windows and other platforms, impeded another form of innovation that bore the potential to diminish the applications barrier to entry. There is insufficient evidence to find that, absent Microsoft's actions, Navigator and Java already would have ignited genuine competition in the market for Intel-compatible PC operating systems. It is clear, however, that Microsoft has retarded, and perhaps altogether extinguished, the process by which these two middleware technologies could have facilitated the introduction of competition into an important market.412. Most harmful of all is the message that Microsoft's actions have conveyed to every enterprise with the potential to innovate in the computer industry. Through its conduct toward Netscape, IBM, Compaq, Intel, and others, Microsoft has demonstrated that it will use its prodigious market power and immense profits to harm any firm that insists on pursuing initiatives that could intensify competition against one of Microsoft's core products. Microsoft's past success in hurting such companies and stifling innovation deters investment in technologies and businesses that exhibit the potential to threaten Microsoft. The ultimate result is that some innovations that would truly benefit consumers never occur for the sole reason that they do not coincide with Microsoft's self-interest.
There is the much-repeated contention that Microsoft is being punished for the harm it could cause consumers, not for the harm that it has already caused. The preceding 410 paragraphs of the document deal with all the grievous harm that the company has caused.
In a very well-written statement, one sentence was especially striking:
... however, had Microsoft not devoted its monopoly power and monopoly profits to precisely that end ...
It is ironic that Microsoft, which could grow only because IBM was prevented in its efforts to throttle the PC market by the Justice Department is stopped in its own efforts to throttle the Internet by the very same U.S. Department of Justice.
