The issue in Microsoft’s attempt to rule the browser market is a fear of tomorrow’s cheap, simple, ‘networked’ computers, argues Philip Machanick
The only puzzling thing about the fact that the United States Department of Justice is pursuing a case against Microsoft is why it took so long to find a reason to tackle it. This is a classic anti-trust case: a big company puts a smaller competitor out of business by giving away a rival to the competitor’s product.
Microsoft plans to integrate a suite of Internet applications called Internet Explorer into its operating system, giving the Windows screen the appearance of a website, even using web-style “hyperlinks” to make any software product – a word processor, spreadsheet or accounting package – just a click away from the Internet. (Microsoft’s rivals, particularly Netscape, the company that did most to popularise the World Wide Web, argue that making Microsoft’s Internet products a compulsory part of the operating system is unfair competition.)
Whatever Microsoft presents as a defence, what is a lot less obvious is why Microsoft should be so keen on cornering the market for web browsing. After all, it has not tried to kill all rival database products by insisting that Microsoft Access is an integral part of Windows 95.
The position Microsoft is putting before Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson is that Explorer consists of over 200 files, and using the standard uninstaller utility only removes about 20 of them. It claims that Explorer cannot be removed without disabling other features of the operating system. It seems that Microsoft has integrated a fair number of Internet access components into newer versions of Windows 95.
The New York Times reports that after Jackson passed a ruling in December requiring Microsoft to offer computer makers a version of Windows 95 without Explorer, the company disingenuously chose to interpret his order as demanding that every last file it ships with the retail edition of Explorer be stripped from earlier browserless versions of Windows 95. The catch is that some of those files are revised versions of the essential program code required by Windows and application programs.
When the retail edition of Explorer is installed, those files merely overwrite older versions already on the machine’s hard drive. It is no surprise that removing them entirely causes major problems.
But the real reason Microsoft is so vigorously fighting is because of a turf war. Microsoft’s business model is based on selling large, complicated application programs that are frequently upgraded, which can’t easily be beaten on features by smaller competitors.
Rivals like Sun, the creators of Java, who build high-end Unix servers and workstations, and Oracle, best known for its databases, are proposing a different model, in which inexpensive computer terminals download small bits of software from a network only as they are needed, a concept called the Network Computer (NC).
In the NC world, programs are small and simple: complex functionality is delivered by combining smaller components. The NC idea has yet to be proved in practice (Microsoft’s Bill Gates is openly contemptuous of it). But if it flies, it not only breaks the Microsoft application model, but gives users relative independence from the underlying platform on which the software runs.
Netscape, the ostensible victim in this case, is a relatively small piece in the game. Netscape’s browser can run Java programs, an essential capability in the NC world. But Internet Explorer also has this capability.
This is where yet another lawsuit comes in: Sun Microsystems, the originator of Java, is trying to prevent Microsoft from distributing a non-standard version of Java, while claiming it is standard. Sun sees this as an attempt at breaking the “run-anywhere” feature of Java programs, where they can run on any computer, irrespective of hardware and operating system.
Microsoft obviously sees some potential for the NC concept, otherwise it’s hard to see why it is fighting it so hard. However, its tactics appear to have backfired. It has apologised for its rhetoric, and the judge rebuffed its demand to have court-appointed “special master”, Harvard University law professor Lawrence Lessig, removed from the case.
Whether it will be forced to give up on integrating Explorer into Windows 98 is the question; it will be interesting to see if the final finding of the court makes this point clear.
The New York Times reports that last week’s testimony centred on the technical components of Internet Explorer and their relationship to Windows 95. Microsoft contends that the two are inseparable.
But Glenn E Weadock, the government’s expert witness, testified that the issue of integration was a false one and that the company had made available an add-remove feature that would eliminate the Internet Explorer icon and a few other components of the browser without disabling Windows 95.
— Philip Machanik is a computer science lecturer, currently at the University of Michigan