Despite recent arguments by a group of states to continue Microsoft anti-trust oversight, the U.S. Department of Justice is saying no. An article from Dow Jones MarketWatch reports:
“There is no basis for the court to order a five-year extension of the final judgments,” the Justice Department said in a court filing, citing a lack of evidence provided by the states that such oversight is justified.
The oversight period from the original 2002 judgment was supposed to have ended in November, but in late October, U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly extended it to January – a short-term move to give all parties time to present their arguments, the judge said at the time. The states then lobbied to continue oversight for five more years. But the DOJ said today that the arguments laid out by the states are not good enough. The DOJ is making the right move. The fact is, five years of government oversight hasn’t significantly changed Microsoft’s behavior — nor will five more years. Changing market conditions will ultimately change Microsoft, particularly the rise of Linux and open-source alternatives to popular Microsoft products. The wave of social networking and Web 2.0 technologies, all of it boiling along completely outside Microsoft’s control, will disrupt the status quo. If Microsoft survives these shifts — and there is every reason to believe it will — that will be the best possible thing for Microsoft. Because a Microsoft that is a player in the open-source, Web 2.0 world will be a revised company, in much the same way that IBM remade itself after missing the open standards/PC revolution of the 1980’s.
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