Microsoft’s anti-trust consent decree expires 12th May–will the gloves come off with the shackles also?

February 6, 2011 | By Surur

cza1421l Microsoft has been hamstrung for nearly a decade by a US anti-trust ruling which saw their every action supervised by 600 compliance officers in the company, working to ensure Microsoft does not do anything which would risk leveraging their installed base of Windows users to enter other markets.

This has seen many of Microsoft’s more recent products not showing much integration with Microsoft’s main product, and making a very poor case for Windows users for buying other Microsoft products – in the end the intent of the ruling.

Other Microsoft competitors have not had their hands bound in the same way – Apple often boasts of how their 160 million credit card numbers, obtained by their iPod monopoly, guarantees their success when introducing new media products. Google, who has 85% of the worldwide search market, has used their internet dominance to enter several markets, often giving away their product for free, to the detriment of the current players. Garmin for example saw their share price drop from $127 to $31 over the last 4 years, while TomTom saw an even bigger drop from $64 to $4 over the same period.

A good example of a product which almost appears to be from a separate company is Windows Phone 7. The Zune sync software has to be downloaded separately, and does not sync anything more than media and apps, with the iPhone able to sync more, contacts and calendar for example. Compare this with Windows Mobile, developed before the consent decree, which synched directly with Outlook, was able to sync documents and other files, synched music with Windows Media Player and had tools for remote desktop access in both directions, they are clearly two very different products.

Despite Microsoft’s determination to run tablets on full desktop Windows, it is unlikely that these devices will be our main devices, given the constraints on screen size, processing power and flash storage. Microsoft should make desktop (or laptop) integration one of the main features of these devices, whether they run a full desktop OS or not. With the consent decree out of the way, they will be much more free to do so, hopefully for Windows phone 7 also.

With the consent decree expiring, Microsoft will be much more free to pursue integration of their products, but of course the risk of future anti-trust action remains, in Europe and USA, not to mention by now an ingrained culture which eschews such efforts. We will have to see if any dramatic change in how Microsoft does business will come in the second half of 2011, but at least the company will be free to compete on an even field once again, using one of its main assets.

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About Surur

Site Admin and Windows Phone enthusiast, he has been using Windows Mobile devices since before they were called PocketPC’s. He is currently sporting a HTC 7 Trophy.

Tagged microsoft, windows phone 7

jplayer01

Oh, wow, didn't know about this. It will be interesting to see if we'll be getting better integration among Microsoft's apps. They really need to leverage their platform(s) more.

Travis

I hope better integration does come about. I doubt though that they could be tried for anti-trust again as Google & Apple for a easy example as the same if not larger(money & products) than MSFT was when they got tried. MSFT could more or less simply ask a judge to look over their neighbours fence and see how Google and Apple would infringe on anti-trust laws themselves.

I hope they have programs sitting in the wind waiting for this to pass over then release them like a tidal wave to destroy the competition!
http://twitter.com/Saad073 @Saad073

Ironically, Windows Phone 7 is probably the first platform MS has made that really does fully leverage a lot of their services into one cohesive whole:

-Zune (finally the brand is used with the right platform)
-Windows Live (not that big in US anymore but HUGE worldwide)
-SkyDrive
-Xbox Live

The last missing piece is Windows 7 and I would absolutely love it if it worked seamlessly with Windows Live Essentials as well (the Photo Gallery is the perfect example of a wasted opportunity).
techSage

I think Windows Phone 7 does the greatest job of demonstrating how effective, useful and powerful it can be when there is integration among different platforms. It links together Xbox Live, Windows Live with contacts, Hotmail, Skydrive and others, Sharepoint services & Office with all of it's components, Zune Marketplace, Exchange Server, Internet Explorer technology, Bing, Silverlight, XNA, and probably more. Imagine if they continue to apply this kind of pressure to their development what they might accomplish. Now that they have strong competition again, they should be allowed to flex some muscle to get the competition to be more innovative and vice versa in a cycle.

sab0tage

Sharepoint doesn't work as I expected it. As I understand it, the integration only works properly over WiFi on a company network, rather than over the internet as I had assumed.

I'm still waiting for better SkyDrive integration.

OOOOijojo

changes i hope to see:

-zune shipping on every PC
-silverlight shipping on every PC

-skydrive integration built into everything

the sky is the limit without the government watching.

Brian

Doesn't this list support the whole anti trust case though? Without Microsoft's ability to illegally abuse their monopoly position none of those technologies has been able dominate (not even close).

xma1e

Probably not in the same argument, but it interesting to see that Apple are using their control over the Appstore to monopolise content. for instance, the Sony eReader.

Also Apple are using their dominance to dictate what content eNewspapers can be displayed ont he iPAD

Brian

Th integration problems Microsoft has are institutional, not legal – the integration problem is an internal one.

Jake

It will be interesting to see what sort of change this leads to, if any. It's been quite obvious over the last decade that MS have struggled due to the oversight they've been subjected to and I'm sure they're as aware of the lack of integration in their products as we are.

Hopefully we'll see a newly invigorated and empowered MS in the months and years ahead.
Ram

Now its time for DoJ and EU to go after Apple and Google for their dominance in MP3 players and Internet search respectively.

Brian

Having a dominant market position (monopoly) is not illegal, abusing that monopoly to give yourself an advantage in a different market is what is illegal.

wspaw

Exactly… and they both clearly leverage those dominant positions to bolster their positions in other markets.

Brian

Example? I don't think you understand how antitrust law works.

OOOOijojo

eric schmidt was on the board of directors for apple while they both had agreements not to "poach each others employees"

how is that not an antitrust issue? http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Search-Engines/Google-Ap…

and google leverages their power:

Skyhook sued google for anti-competitive practices and patent infringement claiming that the ad giant used its control over Android to "force device manufacturers" to not only integrate Google's location technology instead of Skyhook's "superior end user experience," but also terminate contract obligations with Skyhook where they existed.
Brian

The hiring agreement has nothing to do with monopolies and anti-trust, it was a minor issue, and the involved companies settled with the department of justices ("we won't do it again").

Skyhook is alleging patent infringement (this case has nothing to do with monopolies) and the case hasn't even gone to court yet.

Like wspaw, you appear to have no knowledge of the legal system whatsoever.
hvakrg

What about the complaints against Google leveraging their own services in their search engine from companies in Europe.
Alan Strangis

Just from the past week… Apple telling ebook sellers that they HAVE to open a store on Apple devices, and that Apple will get a 30% cut of those sales… that's pretty damned close if you ask me.
Brian

If Apple required 30 of sales on other platforms in order to get the app into the iOS appstore you might have something. Making a vendor comply with the terms and conditions of their own appstore is not a monopoly problem.

zzz

Apple and Google got busted for having an illegal no-compete agreement for hiring. I'm pretty sure they have other things going on to fend off MS and WP7. What do you think Jobs and Schmidt were talking when they were having coffee together in Palo Alto? They can't leave email traces behind…

Brian

It wasn't just Apple and Google – Adobe, Intel, Intuit, and Pixar were also involved. Oh, and it was a pretty minor thing, all the parties settled with the DOJ (basically "we won't do it again" was enough). This doesn't even come close to Microsoft's antitrust conviction.

hvakrg

I might be conpletely wrong here, but MS was never convicted of anything were they? Didn't they settle and agree to be monitored?

Lennard

as much as I remember yeah they were convicted. At the time Microsoft's marketshare was a little over 500billion or something like that. After the conviction and monitoring they have been on a steady decline since then. The main reason: internet explorer. They were integrating it too deep into windows.

I know by now if Microsoft was still able to innovate with IE we would have seen apps in browsers way longer. It would have probably been a normal thing on the web by now.

Anyways. Looking forward to see what Microsoft does with this. Hope they open a can of kickass on their opponents.
Northerngeek

Indeed, that and Microsoft's "Passport" service for the web which was going to predate Facebook Connect and OpenID by a decade. The antitrust suit was good for Microsoft's competitors and sucky for everybody else- they just haven't realised it yet.

djguapo

I don't think the reason there isn't contacts/calendar sync in Zune SW is because of the antitrust ruling; the reason we don't see it is because Microsoft prefers that kind of sync to be done through the cloud. If anything, in the future we're going to be seeing more sync scenarios being moved from the desktop to the cloud, preferably using Skydrive/Mesh.
jabtano

All I know is this. If MS can't do things that others can such as goggle and apple why should MS hands be cuffed while there are not?I was told the reason that iphone has a better one note is because of this very thing.really it's just wrong.

http://twitter.com/Saad073 @Saad073

A lot of my friends in my university have Macs. I asked them why they love the iPhone so much when they clearly are impressed by my Focus, they said because "everything just works together".

And it's true–if you're a Mac user and you have an iPhone you have the hands down best experience in mobile right now. The same applies to Google: if you use Gmail, Google Voice, YouTube, Google Docs, and more Android really does the best job of integrating all of those services together.

I really do agree that MS should no longer have its hands tied now that Apple has become so successful with the iOS + Mac combination and even Google's online services with Android. But imagine if Microsoft can make this happen–seamless connectivity with Zune, Windows Live Essentials, the Libraries of Windows 7, Microsoft Office 2010…the list goes on.

James

I would sincerely hope they can at least get Outlook task, contact, and mail sync work more closely, along with remote desktop, Skydrive integration, and better integration with Office Online

hvakrg

I doubt Microsoft will ever include Outlook sync, atleast not anytime soon, there are alot of more important bugs that needs to be fixed, and syncing directly with Outlook is a very backwards way of doing things. People should sync with their mailserver now with their client.

As for things that this could open up for I think they have been holding back Zune integration in WMC for this exact reason. Since WMC is bundled with Windows they couldn't use that to leverage Zune. But now things might be opened up so they could do just that. Hopefully they have the brains to do so, and in adition they should open up an app-system for it so that Netflix, Hulu, NBA, NFL, MLB and so on can integrate their content in a good way.

http://twitter.com/Saad073 @Saad073

I doubt Microsoft will immediately be able to make WP7 and W7 work seamlessly starting May 13th, if this is really one of the only things holding Microsoft back from utilizing its massive economies of scale, 2011 and 2012 will be a VERY interesting year for them.
Lennard

Looking forward for great things
Drewidian

I just want MS to set it up so that Skydrive or a Computer can be used to synchronize/backup my settings for each application I have. If they did this and application designers took advantage of this, I could easily upgrade my phone, and automatically install apps with the settings I have and not worry about which apps I purchased and how they were configured. A version system would be great as well so I could try different setups and not have to worry about what I had configured and how. Just make sure that it synchronizes as an option and is not required.

KennyB1234

As awesome as this sounds, it's probably a bit too advanced to be offered, since this is a "consumer device." Lots of things have been dumbed down.

Mark Jonson

That dumbing-down of computer tech is Apple and Google's fault. The iPhone was the biggest regression in technology since the ringback tone was invented. While I realize today, that Microsoft was doing things on the web 10 years ahead of Google and Facebook, I still hold that Google and Apple ruined everything. Now we have to sell our souls (actually, our privacy) to do anything on a computer thanks to Google, and what we can do is fully-controlled and must be "Jobs Approved" thanks to Apple. I miss the good ol' days of a Microsoft monopoly. At least you could install whatever you wanted without having to go through a pre-filtered app store and I could just pay for it with money rather than my privacy.

KennyB1234

A nice alternative, however, would be if the games and apps connected to their own servers to keep settings and level progress updated. It could be connected to your Live ID, so that whenever you reinstall the app, it goes and snags everything upon first boot.