Remember the story a few weeks back on how a county in Iowa got a judgment against Microsoft on price gouging? Well Part 2 of that happened yesterday, but this time Microsoft came out the winner. The AP is reporting that a Des Moines attorney alleged the software giant had violated its anti-trust agreement by not sharing certain APIs with developers. She took her case to the Iowa’s attorney’s office and the Justice Department.
But the Iowa attorney’s office dismissed the case for lack of evidence. Microsoft’s 2002 anticompetitive deal was with the Justice Department, 17 states and Washington, D.C. The 2002 agreement expires at the end of five-years — in other words, 2007. This may explain why the states have suddenly become so gung ho whenever anti-competitive allegations are flung at Microsoft, even by the likes of other giants such as Google.
The states power of one of the world’s most powerful companies will have dwindled considerably after 2007. To everyone’s credit, however, the states do not seem keen on extending their power, Microsoft agreed to play nicely with Google and the market’s growing love with open source could take enough edge off of Microsoft’s power to keep the company from ever being able to abuse it again. Read more.
