Microsoft's Monopoly, Rights & Responsibilities

The Windows 8 Marmite thread's got two basic purposes: talking about Windows 8's design and usability, and debating Microsoft's culpability, responsibilities and role in all of this. I want to expand on the latter, because it always gets overshadowed by arguments about whether or not the W8 interface sucks. The root of Windows 8 dissatisfaction and its poor reception is about more than that: it's a complicated mix of expectation, entitlement, dependancy, brand identity and habit, and I'm struggling to pick it apart.

I just had a long-ass conversation and it boiled down to a few big contentions:

1. Is society's dependence on Microsoft's products Microsoft's fault, someone else's fault, or nobody's fault?

2. Have Microsoft intentionally brought about their current monopoly over business- and education-sector computing, or was it accidental?

3. If intentionally, does creating a monopoly entail taking on obligations and responsibilities to their customers, or are they free to experiment with and/or reshape their products?

4. Amenities and services like public transport, electricity and broadband are privatized, but because they are heavily relied upon, they are regulated and must conform to imposed standards. However, purchasable goods like toys and stationery are unrestricted in quality, design and user satisfaction (beyond basic safety regulations), and natural market competition controls their evolution.

Given that Windows has some limited competition (Apple, Linux, Android) and is heavily relied upon, which category is it closer to: marketed product, or social service?


I am undecided on all of these. I'm discovering that most of my normal ways of thinking about both businesses and services don't really apply to Microsoft: it's something else.

 

What a fascinating direction to take such a discussion. I'll be honest and say that I hadn't even considered the issue in those terms. Now that you've raised them in a discussion here I will think about them.

I would have to go with 'someone else's fault' on this. There was never any reason for competitors to not really give strong competition to Microsoft in the past, before the dominance of Microsoft it really was anyone's game. Of course later on, as Windows became more and more widely used, competition became increasingly difficult as any new innovation were likely to have been thought of by Microsoft themselves. One could argue that any groundbreaking new innovations were bought up by Microsoft as soon as they emerged which would lean the argument towards it being the fault of Microsoft but I have neither knowledge nor records to show if this was the case. I suppose that I would put some blame with IBM, they pushed the computing market forward at a terrific pace early on but never really seemed to grasp the importance of the operating software required for some reason. At least that's how I see things, I could be completely misinformed and spinning out of wholecloth.

I'll refer back to a point in the previous answer for part of this. If Microsoft have been buying up any revolutionary breakthroughs in software as they emerge so as to control future development of the field then yes, clearly it was intentional, but I don't think they've actively gone out of their way to force a dependence on their products. I think it's more a case of a company doing their utmost to release the best products they can (ME and Vista aside ) and that in turn leading to a monopoly due to a distinct lack of competition.

I would say all of these apply simultaneously. Any company should retain the right to experiment and rework their products but they must also recognise that they have a responsibility to keep the full functionality of a product intact whether it was intentional or not. If it was intentional then it simply gives more weight to this obligation but even when not intended they must accept that a dependence on their products has arisen and should support them accordingly.

I really hadn't thought of this until now but I believe there should be standards which they should conform to. Education for one example is now highly dependent on the use of Windows and for this to not be regulated in a manner similar to the curriculum's themselves seems painfully shortsighted. Should a drastic change in accessibility and/or usability of the software happen and make the use of it in education either much more difficult or even impossible then an entire generation could suffer and, in turn, potentially the economy of the nation. (this is a massively over the top worst case scenario but the relevance is there.)

I think it lies somewhere in between the two. Whilst it is obviously still a marketed product there is a reliance which dictates more than just a 'box on a shelf' as it were but also something more than a service such as water or gas.

Likewise. I honestly hadn't thought about any of this until I read the OP but now I'm finding that there's a uniqueness about Microsoft as a business model which I had never even considered.

I look forward to where this debate will go (and how completely someone will inevitably tear my answers to pieces with simple logic )

 

I agree with you on most of that, and I do think more evidence/history is needed.

Discussing this with my mum (in whose basement I live, etc.), she pointed out that Microsoft had deliberately and specifically worked its way into business and education sectors by giving student discounts and by tailoring their products to business needs, slowly setting themselves up as the sole provider for people in those sectors (much as Apple have done for graphic design, though less absolutely).

She insists that Windows 8's (argued-to-be) poor design and steep learning curve are more than annoyances - they're a failure by Microsoft to uphold their end of an unwritten contract, a responsibility automatically implied by their dominance over these important sectors. She claims that Microsoft's responsibility is increased because they fiercely drove off or bought up competitors and specifically fought for monopoly. They (apparently) provided discounts and donation programs for educational establishments, too. I don't know whether this is true or not, and would like to know.

Another factor in her expectation that Microsoft would deliver consistent products in a shallow learning curve was that they have previously done so, leading to a question of software design:

5. Does establishing yourself over time as the provider of products in a particular template and with a particular learning curve create an obligation to maintain those in future iterations of the product?

I'm not sure I want to say yes to this. In the case of Windows 8 I kinda do, but put up as a rule I think it starts a slippery slope, prohibiting the kind of innovation and lateral thinking that often spark huge improvements in technological industries. I think Windows 8 was a misfire in this process of innovation, but I think the process itself is important, especially given how fast hardware changes - the software must be able to change when needed too.

That said, education and business sectors do depend on Windows and its continued usability is important.

A better response occurs: rather than curbing and regulating the development style of future iterations of Windows, why not make a requirement that previous versions must remain available for a specified number of years after launch, i.e. Microsoft cannot stem the flow of old keys as soon as a new iteration of Windows is released? This would protect companies and schools from suddenly being plunged into crisis when they need to upgrade or expand on their IT equipment but need to maintain usability and compatibility for their employees/students and only have a choice of one version, which may or may not be suitable for their needs and existing setups.

After all, the way they instantly stop producing old keys when a new version comes out, effectively ending the old version, definitely implies that the new version will do all of the things the old version did, which is often not the case.

It would also mean that Microsoft sales statistics would become more accurate metrics of the popularity of their products. So far in computer history you've only ever been able to buy one version of Windows at any given point in time, and the lack of choice denies customers the ability to (a) vote with their wallets or (b) choose a version which is most suited to their particular needs.

It would also relieve Microsoft of the burden of maintaining compatibility in their newest versions of Windows, which has been mentioned in the other thread as one of the main reasons Windows does struggle so much to improve itself and innovate without disastrous side-effects.

 

I think at the basis of this discussion are the principles of a free market economy. If we accept that a free market economy is a Good Thing, then it means that companies are allowed to do whatever they want (within the law) and let market forces sort them out.

If market forces cause one company to prevail and become the leading standard, so be it. If said company then suddenly decides to change its product, so be it. Again, market forces will determine whether it was a good thing or a bad one. In case of the former, the product will thrive and expand. In case of the latter, the market will sway to an alternative (from PCs to tablets, for example) and the product is forced to adapt or wither.

If this sounds like natural selection, that's because that is how a free market economy works. There is no obligation to the customer (except, within the legal framework, for the product to be free of defects and do what it says on the box). Natural selection doesn't care about us either. Then again, neither does the customer have an obligation to buy the product. There are always alternatives, because in a free market economy where there's demand, sooner or later there is supply.

If you decide that Microsoft does, by its monopoly status, have obligations, then you are essentially arguing for market regulation. That is fine, but regulated markets are not as innovative. You make your choice and pay your price.

 

Greetings!

One of them ,if I recall correctly, is the absence of barriers to entry said market.
The amount of investment needed to develop, market and sell in any kind of significant amount an OS makes a pretty huge barrier to entry.
No upstart will create an OS and be able to sell to businesses and public sector in a way that will cause a damage to Microsoft.

 

The absence of barriers does not mean equality of position. I can embark on a career as professional footballer, but I cannot claim that it is unfair that Wayne Rooney is more likely to be hired as a professional footballer than me. He has more talent and a better CV. He earned it. He worked at it.

Similarly if someone wants to become a psychologist with my kind of pay check, there are no more barriers to him doing so than I encountered. All they have to do is study their ass off for six years and gain twenty years of clinical experience.

Microsoft started as a two-man band in 1972 with some code handwritten by Bill Gates himself. The company worked hard to get where it is now. Any other company can do the same.

 

Greetings!

And which OS claimed 90+% of the desktop market in 1972?

 

Yes you are right. Microsoft got in at the start when there was all sorts of stuff going on with computers.

Their current status, prevalence and consumer familiarity of windows makes it impossible to repeat the process which Bill and friends went through from '72 on. The only ones that come close to competing are obviously apple and linux. Which, when combined have a pitiful market share of desktops.

The only way for a real contender to Microsoft to come in to play is for the desktop computer (laptops as well) to disappear. Which is what's slowly happening now. So we are going from a monopoly in desktops to a duopoly in the mobile arena. Depending on how Microsoft do in the mobile and ultra portable market we could see them in a similar position to apples current desktop position. A pitful share of a large market. Or they could rise to the top and establish a monopoly there, again depending on how they do.

Perhaps it would be nice to see three or more companies have equal share of the consumer O/S market. But then you run into the problem of propriety software and incompatibility between them. So you run one thing your friend runs another and a friend of both of you runs yet another thing. Everyones things are left not talking to each other, or doing so in a half arsed haphazard manner.

So there is one advantage to having a monoply. Everyone's on the same infrastructure.

The best thing from a sociological or even just consumer point of view would be to have multiple open source competing systems all with reasonable market share. This would give consumer choice, but still allows compatibility between the various systems. Meaning you are not forced down one particular avenue because of compatiblity requirements and your choice is much more free.

Of course that doesn't gel with shareholders, or rich people in general. The best we could hope for is for everyone to agree to a compatibility layer. But again that is not something the shareholders would like.

 

Just as there is the harm principle in personal freedom, though, so there should be an equivalent caveat in free markets, because Microsoft's behaviour has actively suppressed free market behaviour (or so it can be argued):

My freedom to swing my fists around ends at your freedom not to have a broken nose, and I'd have thought that Microsoft's freedom to buy, sell and innovate ended at other companies' freedom to develop and compete independently without pressure or coercion.

I realise I may be wrong about this, and that this may not be how it actually is, but I'm saying that this is how it should be. If you want free market activity to function properly, you can't have the biggest, most successful company turning around and crushing that activity.

edit - Nexxo, you always make the issue a purely legal one, but I want to talk about it in moral terms as well, because in the end, moraity informs legislation, not the other way around. 6. Do you think it's moral for Microsoft to establish an effective monopoly, and to then do things that go against the interests and needs of its existing customers?

I was playing devil's advocate in a debate with my mum on this exact point, and she called me out on treating the legality of Microsoft's actions as the final word. She contended that individuals being subject to moral pressures as well as legal ones, but big companies automatically being exempt from moral pressures and only scraping under the legal ones, makes no sense. When I reflected for a bit, I couldn't remember where I'd gotten this ingrained idea that big companies didn't have to behave morally or decently.

 

In 2007 Windows Mobile had a 42% market share in the smartphone market. Then Apple came along, a total noob in that market, with iOS/iPhone. The rest is history.

You probably got that idea from the fact that free market economies are amoral. As I said before: it's like natural selection. It's a pragmatic system.

You can chuck morality into this (and I'm all for that), but then you don't have a free market economy anymore. Moreover you then have to ask questions like: who decides whether Microsoft acts "against the interests and needs of its existing consumers"? People who don't happen to like Windows 8? In a free market economy it would be the consumers themselves who decide: people voting with their wallet. After all, Linux is free.

I remember the good ol' days of Microsoft not being allowed to ship IE with its OS so that other web browsers could get a break. But was that necessary? Either customers were quite happy with IE, or if they weren't, there was nothing to stop them from installing another. It's how a free market economy works.

A monopoly suggests that consumers have no alternative choice. In this case they do: Apple OSX, Linux. In mobile devices they definitely do, and they are exercising that choice. This is not a moral issue of whether people are paid a living wage, of child labour, of Foxconn working conditions or whether people can afford the price of decent food and clean drinking water. This is a First World Problem of overentitlement. I would argue that nobody is dependent on an OS like they are on food and utilities. Before the 1980's a whole world functioned without PCs just fine. Most current mission-critical computers don't run Microsoft OSs anyway and if they did they could switch to a viable free alternative tomorrow.

 

You're a school head. Nine years ago you paid to have your existing faculty trained up on Windows XP and they've been happily trucking ever since. You know that your existing machines are rapidly running out of lifespan; many are breaking down already. You need to bulk-order new machines in. You also know that Windows 8's interface will be unadoptable for your staff and will require extra training to be useful to them. You also know from discussions with those already attempting to use it at home that it will be largely unpopular with the staff.

What do you do?

(Note: the issue at stake here is not whether Windows 8 can be wrangled into being a usable solution with training or modifications, but whether consumers have any choice. So "train the employees to use Windows 8" will be a self-defeating answer.)

 

Find out why my bright, University-degree'd teachers cannot get their heads around Windows 8 when a three-year old can.

Else I install that fine product of free market enterprise: Start8.

 

There is no way for this not to devolve into an argument about Windows 8's GUI, is there :/

The point I was trying to make is that if, for whatever reason, Windows X is not suitable for your company's needs, there is no other choice. Every alternative is vastly more difficult and pretty much impossible to implement. People are literally dependent on Windows because there is literally no alternative: that's the premise for discussing Microsoft's rights and responsibilities. It is very different to a normal market scenario, where there are competing products with similar ranges of benefits and disadvantages. In school-and-business land, it's Windows or gtfo. And because Microsoft only sell one iteration at any one time, you cannot choose between versions.

 

Sorry, but the scenario is a bit far-fetched. But for the sake of argument, there is OSX (I'm sure that Apple would be happy to do an educational discount) or there is Linux (free). Either offers an Office (alike) suite and proprietary analogues to commonly used Windows programs. Either will need some staff training and getting used to, but people had to learn to use computers when they replaced typewriters and they managed that.

This is not a moral dilemma. This is one of those daily life 'things change' hassles. We had to learn to drive cars; learn to type, learn to use computers and then the internet. We constantly have to learn new skills. People manage. After all they got their heads around iOS too.

Let me tell you what is a real moral problem. At one of my local hospitals we use a certain IV medication pump. Let's call it pump no. 1. It is robust, reliable, idiot-proof simple to program (calculate dose and dilution of meds and set flow rate accordingly) and use. Unfortunately it is also more expensive than the other make of pump in use, let's call that one pump no. 2, which is still reliable and robust, but not very ergonomic and a headache to program and use. Errors are more likely, and errors mean harm to patient. Because this pump is cheaper, it is of course the more frequently procured model.

Now, real people's lives are really at stake. Are we going to force the company that makes pump no. 1 to sell it at the same, cheaper price as the other company sells pump no. 2? It's the moral thing to do, no? But is that fair on company 1, which possibly spent more time and effort making a more ergonomic product but is not going to see a return on investment on that, or is it fair on company 2, which suddenly loses its competitive advantage on price to a superiorly designed product made by a competitor? Sure, company 2 could drop the price further, just as company 1 could drop the quality a bit to compensate for the loss of income, but how moral is it to intervene in the market so both companies ends up producing a lower quality of medical pump? OK then, we enforce stricter minimal standards on ergonomics while controlling the price. But that drives up production costs so either the job gets outsourced to a Third World country with cheap labour or perhaps companies decide to ditch the whole business as unprofitable, and we end up with no pumps at all. Tricky.

Or we take the free market approach and let buyers decide what they value more: minimising risk of medication errors or being able to afford enough pumps to go around. Perhaps we should just train nursing staff to get used to the less ergonomic pumps. And indeed, that is what happens: they found ways around the quirks of pump no. 2. Because it turns out that a human brain is quite smart and adaptable.

 

Perhaps I'm mixing two arguments into one here; I should distinguish. I don't mean that Microsoft inconveniencing existing customers with its new crappy interface is a moral issue, or of any real gravity. It's just convenience and inconvenience, stress and daily hassle.

When I said moral terms, I meant the broad question of whether Microsoft's position of control over their existing customers brings a moral obligation to their customers to provide certain standards and functionality in updated products that simultaneously cut off and forcibly replace the older ones. In specifics: since many people have no choice but to use Windows, and now have no choice but to use Windows 8, are Microsoft obliged to make Windows 8 a certain way*?

I know the elephant in the room is the Start menu, but frankly I'm not very bothered by that change. For the sake of argument, imagine a bigger change: imagine they dropped docx support in Windows 8 in favour of some new, hypothetical format, forcing people to outright abandon older setups or avoid newer ones by buying refurbished/outdated kit. (This is just a thought experiment. In reality they're kinder than this, and in the past they've provided intermediaries like the Office 2007 Compatibility Pack, so we're imagining a hypothetical, evil, alter-ego Microsoft.)

The question for the moral side of all this is: would that be an immoral business practice, or does anything go? Can they release windows B and suddenly have it not perform a host of functions that Windows A did? (This will have limited relevance to the trivial GUI concerns we've had, but it's worth establishing this point in principle.)

*I reject the myth that customers enjoy this leisurely choice between operating systems, as if they were brands of cereal. Investing in an OS at the business level is a huge investment of man-hours, learning capacity and money, an investment made partly on the faith that the service being provided will carry on being provided in the future. Sure, that obligation isn't formalized in any contracts, and technically the company providing the OS could just stop doing so the day after contractual support ends, but it's an assumption we all make about products. When a difficult-to-substitute product suddenly changes, it means downtime and hassle for everyone using it, and (I might argue) the manufacturer's responsibility increases proportionate to the number of people using that product.

If we thought any product as important and learned as an operating system was going to change drastically or shift significantly to a different customer type and priority set, we wouldn't buy into it in the first place. Well, I know I wouldn't. You buy a VW because you know that, in so many years time, they'll still be making cars much like yours, or spares for yours will still be readily available, and support will be at hand. If you went back to the garage five years later hoping for a loyalty discount on a similar product and they said, "sorry, we don't make well-engineered, comfortable, reliable hatchbacks any more, we've moved onto low-sprung luxury all-terrain 9-seaters. You'll have to buy one of those," you'd feel misled. We broadly expect them to carry on making the same kind of car for the same set of needs, because those needs still exist and it's what they're best at.

Of course, the analogy is imperfect, because there are lots of companies that compete with VW in the hatchback market. So to make it more relevant, imagine that VW were the only company in the world making well-engineered, comfortable, reliable hatchbacks, and anybody you expressed vexation to just told you to go buy a luxury sedan (i.e. Mac) or a Reliant Robin (Linux) instead. Because while you were asleep, the market had decided that your set of needs didn't exist anymore, and reliable hatchbacks no longer existed.

You can sit around for the next five years hoping a new company steps up and starts making reliable hatchbacks, of course, but in the meantime I think you'd be well within your rights to feel misled and let down by VW.

For sure, people can adjust. But adjustment can still mean inconvenience, stress, trade-offs, poorer performance or results, and lower customer satisfaction. And unless that dissatisfaction gets really huge, the supplier effectively knows (in Microsoft's case) that their existing customers will stick with it anyway; so they're free to experiment on, or toy with, their existing customers, risking their customers' bad experiences and stress and inconvenience without fearing losing those customers. And that's not very "free market". It's an abusive relationship between customer and provider where the customer is vulnerable, restricted and easily taken advantage of, so maybe the usual "anything goes" free market philosophy isn't appropriate there.

 

You are arguing that a company has a moral obligation to keep meeting its customers' needs if they have invested in a particular product. If we follow that logic, companies cannot change anything that might become a barrier to a customer continuing to use that product. They have to maintain 100% backward compatibility back to 1980. No Windows Phone 8 but Windows CE. No OSX and iOS but MacOS. No 64-bit Windows. No reliance on Mouse-based GUI --some people may have really invested in MS-DOS. No Hasswell, because it does not play nice with some existing PSUs. No PCI-X because some people still have AGP graphic cards. Sony also has some explaining to do for not maintaining backward compatibility with the PS1, PS2 and PS3 in their PS4. People paid good money for those games...

We can't have DVDs because some people spent a lot of money on their VHS movie collection. We can't have CDs because of the vinyl junkies out there. We can't have MP3 players because of audio cassettes. We can't have smartphones because some people can cope only with dumb phones.

And why can't you start your car with a hand crank anymore? That would have been damn handy if you have a flat battery. I'm not too thrilled you can't get a Model T anymore either --it was a damn fine car, nothing wrong with it. But can you get the spares?...

Hell, companies cannot even quit the market. Rover is in so much trouble right now... as is Palm Computing, as is HP for ditching WebOS, Commodore for giving up on Amiga and C64, and Atari for giving up on the ST.

You see my point. The reason why Windows is changing is because customers are leaving it in droves for iOS and Android; two completely different OS's with a totally different GUI, input interface and almost no file compatibility whatsoever. If there is a moral issue, they are not experiencing it. If anything, Microsoft is trying to create the best of both worlds: give people what they want but also give them backward compatibility with existing systems. Remember your observations about the illogical folder structure? Legacy compatibility. It could be argued that Microsoft is taking the 'moral path' here, and having a lot of headaches, derision and ingratitude for it.

 

Windows desktop monopoly and server for that matter will not change.

They had to give apple cash in the 90s to stop them been broken up when apple was heading under.

iOS and andriod are popular in mobile but can anyone see them been a desktop OS as I can not.

Mac OSX is popular with professionals which equates to there 8-10% share they have. Googles desktop creation failed even if its still sold.( 1-2% at best share of desktop OS)

All the Linux together bearly muster 1% of desktop usage.

Microsoft is trying to get all its products to link together as the pc sector is slowly but surely running downwards there will always be a market for its products but its no longer increasing year on year. CPUs and gpus have hit the point where several gen old hardware is fast enough for 90% of people.

Wether microsofts future is mobile I have my douts also as there windows phone products have not really blown away on the sales fronts and are still behind a dead blackberry.

Similar situation with tablets windows rt tablets are too expensive to see mass market adoption and the windows pro tablets are late to the rest of the world which is a shocking failure by Microsoft.

I'd of brought a surface pro in jan when its released but it took till nigh on June to see one in the uk that for me was 5 months too late.

 

Greetings!

Speaking of a smartphone market pre iPhone is a bit pointless. Everybody was still in the PDA. Even Blackberries were uncommon out of certain national markets.
Apple couldnt be compared to a Microsoft from 1972, it lacks the "Microsoft started as a two-man band in 1972" aspect. Or Google.

Microsoft ruled the Mouse Era and failed to adopt any decent policies to enter the Touch Era. Now it has to compete with Apples iOS and Googles Android on touch controlled portable devices and chose to use its dominant position in the desktop\laptop to advance its touch market share, imposing a touch first UI on all of its customers.

No.
Had Microsft offered a way to disable Metro (StartScreen, Charms, etc) and enable the classical StartMenu, W8 would have been unanimously received as a great OS. Its the imposition of the UI that makes it fail. Microsofts own fault.

 

There were Smartphones before the iPhone. The first was the Ericsson R380 (Symbian) in 2000 followed by the Nokia Communicator and Navigator range (Symbian) from 2000 to 2007. Handspring's Palm/Treo had a few in 2001, and we had some Windows Mobile devices, e.g. the HTC Universal in 2005. Smartphones were getting popular, which is what made Apple decide to adapt its early iPad concept to create a smartphone of its own which launched as the iPhone in 2007.

Apple started as a two-man band too: Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak. Google again started as a two-man band: Larry Page and Sergey Brin. They all grew to become masters of their own domain, overtaking bigger competitors in the process.

It is trying to do more than that: one OS for all devices, as there is an increasing diversity and convergence in those. It is what Canonical is doing with Ubuntu, and what Apple is working towards with MacOS and iOS. It's the future, whether you like it or not.

No, people would have complained that it was too similar to Windows 7 and showed no real innovation; that Microsoft was still not getting that the PC era is over and mobile devices are on the rise, and that it was still failing to, in your words, adopt any decent policies to enter the Touch Era.

 

Greetings!

"Were getting", not "were".

Not on the mobile OS market. When they jumped to the mobile market they were already big players elsewhere.

It can have that without imposing the same UI on all devices.

Why?
The StartScreen, Charms, Metro apps, etc would still be there to anyone who chose to enable\not disable them. Those would be chosen over the classical StartMenu and UI, wouldnt they? Being so superior and all...