Microsoft Should Be Our Last Worry

Why is the Clinton Justice Department picking on Microsoft? The company hasn’t built any toxic dumps, its product line doesn’t cause cancer. Nor is it produced in sweatshops or by child or prison labor.

Bill Gates didn’t make his mark by exploiting sex and violence for the sake of ratings, or by bombarding us with telemarketing scams, or by dehumanizing health care. And his products seem reasonably priced relative to the reward they bring in customer satisfaction and increased productivity.

Of all the companies to go after, by any reasonable standard of social harm, Microsoft would appear to be far down the target list. Particularly for the Clinton administration, which has acted more aggressively than any Republican predecessor to remove government regulation of business activity.

But the Justice Department’s Microsoft case, now endorsed by U.S. District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson, who prides himself on an unfamiliarity with computers, is not based on the assertion of social harm, unless by that one means that there are some other companies that want to be as big as Microsoft and haven’t quite made it.

Sorry, but their complaint just doesn’t compute. There is no compelling public interest in the demand of those multimillionaires at Sun, Netscape or AOL that they should be even richer. They are in fact shameless ingrates who should admit that their ability to attract venture capital was due to the clarity of purpose and bright prospects for profit that Gates brought to the once-geeky computer world.

Nowhere in the Justice Department filings is there a compelling case that the power of Microsoft undermines consumer freedom. Instead, what should be called into question is the outdated model of antitrust being pursued by the government. In the Information Age, the concern of regulators should focus not on size but rather the power of a company or industry over the lives of ordinary citizen-consumers.

In 1996, Clinton signed the sweeping Telecommunications Act, which effectively ended all public restraint on the broadcast, cable and telephone industries. The result has been an alarming concentration in the ownership of the airwaves, a giveaway of billions in digital spectrum to media fat cats, rising cable rates and a feeding frenzy to hoard telephone numbers that has made the area code an endangered species. The administration’s response to the plethora of telecommunications problems, be they cable access or the proliferation of Internet hate sites, has been a bemused “what, me worry?” stance that assumes market forces will happily sort it all out. At least as long as that hobgoblin Microsoft is kept at bay.

This week, the White House tells us that the president is “eager” to sign the Financial Services Modernization Act, which opens the floodgates for the conglomeration of the banking, insurance and stock brokerage industries. So eager that Clinton has swept aside warnings that the new conglomerates will be legally empowered to freely swap information concerning our private purchases, credit history and medical records.

If social harm is the standard, then it is the banks that blithely charge usurious interest rates, often approaching 25%, that should be reined in rather than having their scope expanded.

Microsoft, like the old AT&T; monopoly over telephone lines, does not control, or even influence, the content of the information carried by its operating system. It would be fanciful to suggest that any Microsoft product has serious influence over what we think or the capacity to invade our personal space. As a content provider, Microsoft has been a consistent failure, witness the dismal example of its online magazine Slate.

We may all use Microsoft Word to write, but as with the standard “Qwerty” keyboard, it does not influence what we write or think. Nor is Microsoft a threat to control, or even guide, Internet access, as the astounding success of AOL and Yahoo indicates. Microsoft’s Windows CE, its slimmed down version for hand-held computers and cable set-boxes, is not even a serious factor in the exploding world of wireless information transmission.

Microsoft has succeeded when its products work best, as in the case of Microsoft Word eliminating the once-dominant WordPerfect. But as the spectacular success of rival Quicken over Microsoft Money demonstrates, consumers have had plenty of opportunity to reject Microsoft’s offerings in the market.

The fact is, Microsoft is being used as a fig leaf to hide the naked capitulation of the Clinton administration in areas like broadcasting, telecommunications, health care and financial services that are crying out for regulation in the public interest. While it is difficult to muster sympathy for anyone as outrageously rich as Bill Gates, there can be no question that he is being used as a pawn in this political game.