Monday, August 30, 2004
Microsoft Again:
It's a real shame Microsoft couldn't have used some of its billions to rent a couple of ethics advisors. Perhaps they could have avoided the slew of anti-trust class-action lawsuits that they are now facing, the latest being the state of California. The final straw for me was when they started charging for support for a new system. That's right... they sell a broken product and then charge you to help you fix it. Sweet. I wish I could have thought up something like that and be able to get away with it. However, my sense of morals and ethics would have stopped me, as well as my belief, foolishly, that anyone trying something like that would end up in jail. Not so with Microsoft. We certainly must give them credit for innovative thinking. It unfortunate that they didn't apply equal zeal to providing an excellent product as they did to preventing anyone from competing with the one they already had.
It's a real shame Microsoft couldn't have used some of its billions to rent a couple of ethics advisors. Perhaps they could have avoided the slew of anti-trust class-action lawsuits that they are now facing, the latest being the state of California. The final straw for me was when they started charging for support for a new system. That's right... they sell a broken product and then charge you to help you fix it. Sweet. I wish I could have thought up something like that and be able to get away with it. However, my sense of morals and ethics would have stopped me, as well as my belief, foolishly, that anyone trying something like that would end up in jail. Not so with Microsoft. We certainly must give them credit for innovative thinking. It unfortunate that they didn't apply equal zeal to providing an excellent product as they did to preventing anyone from competing with the one they already had.
# posted by Wil Smith : 5:03 a.m.
