links for 2007-01-13
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established in 2004 March.
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a creative opensource design software
{ Monthly Archives }
January 2007
links for 2007-01-12
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how the iphone secret was kept
Why the antitrust case hit Microsoft but not Apple?
英语的期末paper，我挑了antitrust law，诌了一篇
In May 1998, the U.S. Department of Justice and the Attorney General of 20 U.S. states sued Microsoft inc., the giant of IT industry, for illegally thwarting competition in order to protect and extend its software monopoly. The core question is that whether Microsoft can sell its industry leading operation system software combined with its “killer application” software IE (Internet Explorer). The combination of these two caused Microsoft’s victory in the Internet browser software’s market share over the rival companies like Netscape because at that time a third-party web browser software was slow to be downloaded over a modem or had to be purchased in a store. Furthermore, Microsoft’s APIs are considered to favor IE over third party web browsers and the company was intended to form restrictive licensing agreements with OEM computer manufacturers too.
The settlement of the 4 years’ complicated case, which once caused a potential solution to break Microsoft into two separate units to avoid the further monopoly in software industry, came out to be the share of Microsoft’s APIs and the full access to its systems, records and source codes for 5 years.
And this year in 2007, just before the release of the industry revolutionary product, iPhone, the Apple Computer Inc. was sued in U.S. over the iTunes-iPod link by an ordinary iTunes Music Store customer named Maleine Tucker who also seeks class-action status. The suit, which is quite similar to the Microsoft IE bundle case, alleges that Apple violated the antitrust law by refusing to allow the songs bought on iTunes Music Store to be played on third party mp3 players besides the iPod which is made by Apple itself. A similar suit was also filed in France by a consumer group in early 2005 and it is still ongoing.
Unsurprisingly, this is not the first time for Apple to be placed in front of the antitrust cases, because unlike Microsoft, Apple who has a history of pairing hardware and software to make sure they are producing the best product for their customers seems more likely to be monopoly in some quite restricted domains. But, I don’t think this iTunes-iPod antitrust case will leave any related troubles to Apple.
Why? Why the antitrust case only hit Microsoft but not Apple? Continue Reading »
Tags: eco, law, paper
links for 2007-01-07
links for 2007-01-06
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Good startup model
links for 2007-01-05
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The game theory?
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they are also the men of the year