Microsoft must move beyond Windows, as clearly seen in fiscal 2011 fourth quarterly and yearly results , announced late yesterday.
Microsoft said it will issue four security updates next week, only one of which is pegged as critical, to patch 22 vulnerabilities in Windows and Visio 2003.
May 122011
It’s not often an official statement comes across my transom claiming absolute and total victory, but that’s exactly the tone struck by the U.S. Department of Justice’s missive about the Microsoft antitrust case, whose judgment provisions finally expire today.
“As a result of the Department of Justice Antitrust Division’s efforts in the Microsoft case and final judgment, the competitive landscape changed allowing the marketplace to operate in a fair and open manner,” reads that statement, “bringing about increased innovation and more choices for consumers.”
Oh, that’s not all. “The final judgment helped create competitive conditions that enabled new kinds of products,” it continues, “such as cloud computing services and mobile devices, to develop as potential platform threats to the Windows desktop operating system.”
At that point, I was surprised the DOJ wasn’t taking outright credit for the iPhone, Facebook, and the bin Laden killing, but maybe some sense of modesty prevailed in the writing of the final sentences.
Microsoft’s own statement was a bit more tempered.
“Our experience has changed us and shaped how we view our responsibility to the industry,” Microsoft spokesperson Kevin Kutz wrote in a statement widely disseminated online. “We are pleased to bring this matter to a successful conclusion.”
Way back in 1998, the DOJ in conjunction with the attorneys general for 19 states and the District of Columbia decided to smack Microsoft with a thunderous bit of antitrust action, centered in large part on the bundling of IE with Windows. Microsoft fought back, arguing that Windows depended on IE, but was ultimately forced into settlement in 2001.
Under the terms of the final judgment, Microsoft agreed to share application programming interfaces with outside companies, and “authorized representatives” were granted access to Microsoft’s software codes and records. The company was also forbidden from retaliating against OEMs if the latter contemplated distributing or selling competing software, and had to designate an internal Compliance Officer with “responsibility for administering Microsoft’s antitrust compliance program and helping to ensure compliance.”
Some provisions in the judgment expired in 2007. The rest ended May 12.
Microsoft is closing a long and tortuous chapter in its history. Windows continues its near-monolithic lock on the operating system market (88.91 percent, according to Net Applications). Internet Explorer holds 55.11 percent (also according to Net Applications), although that share has been degraded in recent quarters by aggressive upstarts like Chrome and Firefox. Wait, how did the DOJ save the tech world, again?
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