For years I have found myself shouting at the TV when Bill Gates or someone else from Microsoft has talked about legislators or judges interfering with their “freedom to innovate”. At the heart of my shouting has always been the question, “what innovation?”
The formidable John Naughton answers that question in an article in the Observer like this:
“…monopolists don’t innovate. Microsoft is no exception. The reason its claims to be on the leading edge are accepted by politicians such as Gordon Brown and Tony Blair is that they know so little about technology. In fact, a close examination of Microsoft’s corporate history reveals the extent to which this innovation propaganda is, well, hooey.”
He then goes on to list Microsoft’s “innovations” and where they came from.
Microsoft is a formidable business machine and has used it’s ownership of computer standards and the cash that generates with enormous skill to maintain it’s dominant position at the desktop, but an innovator it is not.
Bill Gates might want to reflect on the fate of Technicolor, which actually was an innovative company, but like Microsoft abused it’s monopoly.
At one time, if you wanted to make a movie in colour you had to go Technicolor and put up with it’s arrogant demands. When Kodak produced Eastman Color, which gave other Film Labs an opportunity to compete on more or less equal terms, Technicolor saw it’s monopoly position crumble away.
Could Linux be Microsoft’s Eastman Color?