The Microsoft resistance

Redmond may have triumphed legally and financially -- but there are still little ways to strike blows against the empire.

By Scott Rosenberg

Nov. 29, 2001 | It's a Microsoft world, that's clear.

The U.S. Department of Justice has abjectly settled its long-running antitrust suit against the software company on terms that can only be described as surrender. A few holdouts among the state attorneys general who are parties to the suit are unlikely to derail the settlement.

Microsoft has just moved to settle a variety of private antitrust suits by -- get this! -- donating a variety of resources, including oodles of Microsoft software that doesn't cost Bill Gates an incremental cent, to impoverished school systems around the U.S., allowing the company to muscle in on one of the very few markets in which its longtime and long-decimated rival Apple still maintains some strength.

To clear its antitrust plate, Microsoft is moving quickly toward a settlement of European antitrust actions that are the last remaining clouds on its legal horizon.

Each time the technology industry slumps -- as it did in the early '90s, when Microsoft's Windows cemented its now-overwhelming lead on Apple's Macintosh -- Microsoft can make hay; it sits on a pot of roughly $36 billion, and in recessions, cash is king. As the Wall Street Journal recently put it, for Microsoft, an economic downturn means "It's time to wrest important new markets from its weakened rivals": The company can turn up the marketing heat and the research budgets even as its competitors order up layoffs and spending cuts. And it can buy up promising new technology start-ups at bargain prices.

If you are among those who thought Microsoft's behavior deserved sterner treatment in the courts, as I am, is there any alternative to outrage and despair? Of course. Microsoft has been dubbed the Evil Empire so often it's a cliché, but as George Lucas and Ronald Reagan would both remind us, evil empires lose in the end. In Microsoft's case, resistance isn't necessarily futile -- in fact, whether or not it ever succeeds in changing the fact of Microsoft's market control, taking some defiant steps can improve your computing life and work, right here, right now.

That's what supporters of Microsoft who dismiss such complaints as knee-jerk whining -- or sectarian fanaticism in the religious wars of computerdom -- don't get about the critique of Microsoft that's widely held by many industry observers: It's not about mindless anti-Microsoft bias; it's a sane and pragmatic response to the negative aspects of Microsoft's monopoly that continue to warp the computer industry's growth and development.

Next page: What you can do: Four easy steps to freedom