The ancient Chinese proverb, and possibly curse, is “May you live in interesting times’. One look at the main purveyors of computer-related news and it is easily seen that these are indeed, interesting times.

I look around and am amazed how much several articles appearing today mirror my sentiments of the past three weeks in this column. Mary Jo Foley, on ZDNet, asks today what we, the public, would think could change the public perception of Microsoft’s Vista. Larry Dignan, also of ZDNet, asks pointed questions about the future of Microsoft, and what may become Ballmer’s defining hour. In still another story, found on Betanews, we see that Adobe is running for cover, as it were, and using the Open Source community to help Flash animation live and flourish, by basically making it free from both sides, while concurrently protecting the standard against assault from Microsoft. (Strangely, this had been done just weeks before by Microsoft, as a defensive-like offensive with the OOXML standard.)

Of course, we have all been following the pursuit of Yahoo by Microsoft. It seems that if the company cannot purchase the search company outright and above board, it will resort to a proxy fight or possibly subterfuge to gain the upper hand.

Clearly, the movements of Yahoo and Adobe show that Microsoft is feared by lesser companies, and that these companies have an abiding fear of the unscrupulous business practices that have been less widely chronicled this decade than in the last.

What happens next is anyone’s guess, but several changes are going to happen whether we like it or not.

Microsoft is going to try to continue its methods of monopolizing every facet of computing, if left unchecked. Previous efforts to deter this effort have proven fruitless, as the Microsoft machine has almost unlimited funds to persuade or purchase decisions that benefit itself. When the government has attempted to step in, the appearance of change was shown, but underlying methods and practices stayed the same, no doubt due to governmental graft. The workings of the current administration may possibly be the very reason we have seen little to no effort of the government to curtail the standard Microsoft means of doing business. The only observable effective moves against the current practices of Microsoft have been ‘across the pond’ In the European Union. The Union has forced changes in XP, and levied fines.

While it may seem, from the tenor of this and other pieces written here, that I would wish for government intervention, it is not true. I believe that the changes must come from the public recognizing how their wishes are not being fulfilled. The problems at Microsoft will continue until the company takes such a heavy hit economically that it takes notice. It has not happened yet.

To do better, and regain any sort of good will from the public, Microsoft must work on the errors in its core business (operating systems), realize that being all things computing, to all people, is futile and self-destructive, and find a public face that appears to be more like the one seen in more mirrors, side-stepping the circus antics and odd behavior of its current ‘head cheerleader’.

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Quote of the day:
The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly is to fill the world with fools. - Herbert Spencer

Tags: microsoft, adobe, yahoo, open source, unscrupulous business practices, monopoly, european union, intervention, operating systems