Comes vs Microsoft, Inc.

[antidrugue]

A very interesting article about the Comes vs Microsoft, Inc. case is avalaible at Groklaw.net.

Short excerpt of the article entitled Iowa Update - Allchin 2004 email: I'd buy a Mac if I didn't work for MS :

Almost three years ago, on January 7, 2004, Jim Allchin, the senior executive at Microsoft, sent an E-mail to Microsoft's top two executives, Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer, and the subject was losing our way.

Mr. Allchin says, I'm not sure how the company lost sight of what matters to our customers, both business and home, the most, but in my view we lost our way. I think our teams lost sight of what bug-free means, what resilience means, what full scenarios mean, what security means, what performance means, how important current applications are, and really understanding what the most important problems our customers face are. I see lots of random features and some great vision, but that does not translate into great products. He goes on to say, I would buy a Mac today if I was not working at Microsoft.

And here is Jim Allchin's answer to this quote, on Vista's blog.

[burntfuse]

I have to say, it seems to me that he probably was frustrated by how Vista was going and probably wouldn't buy a Mac now (sort of like when you scream "I hate [name of product]!!!" after spending 5 hours trying to get it to work). Looking at the comments on the blog, though, I'm surprised by how Windows-fanboyish some of them are. Glad Microsoft's being sued for being anti-competitive... Maybe they'll actually get punished this time.

[easuter]

Maybe they'll actually get punished this time.

well, I don't know about the USA, but MS isn't having and easy time in Europe...

[burntfuse]

That's true, I had forgotten about that. Isn't the EU fining them or something?

[bigtomrodney]

I think they were getting fined 2 million euro a day at one point. The funny thing was the fines were toward XP, so that Vista is a whole new ballgame.

[bryansmith]

Don't forget about South Korea: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4505698.stm

Not quite the same amount ($32 mil American, 18.4 million pounds) but a fine nonetheless.

Bryan

[easuter]

yup, I think around july this year the fine was already at something like 350 million euros (430 million dollars). not sure what it is at now!

not enough to makea big dent in microsoft's pocket, but it gives them a picture of whats to come if they keep up anti-competative behaviour.

[Danny Lawson]

Yes Microsoft is least bothered about its customers. MS wants to increase its market share and power at the cost of customers trust and faith.IMO people using windows have stoped thinking. They prefer using mouse rather than brains.

[antidrugue]

Ok, ok. I don't exactly want this to be MS bashing. Just a nice informative thread.

I mean, this email excerpt from Jim Allchin was an internal email, not meant to be public. For all we know, he probably only said that just so everyone at MS would react and do something about it.

This mail been publicized by court order. But don't worry : according to the same article, it won't happen again.

Many of you will find it interesting to learn about Microsoft's email destruction policies. It seems Gates has a technical assistant whose duties include making sure that Gates' email is destroyed weekly.

From another article regarding the same case, Comes vs Microsoft Inc., another memo from Jim Allchin was made public by court order. Here is an excerpt :

"We need to slaughter Novell before they get stronger....If you're going to kill someone, there isn't much reason to get all worked up about it and angry. You just pull the trigger. Any discussions beforehand are a waste of time. We need to smile at Novell while we pull the trigger."

I'm sure many of you will find the rest of the article interesting.

[burntfuse]

While the first one seemed pretty normal to me, the other ones...especially talking about "smiling at Novell while we pull the trigger"...