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Break It Up, Microsoft!

Feds want to split the giant into two Baby Bills, for Windows and for applications.

  

What's Unfair About Working Together?

Microsoft has long insisted that its application developers do not get special access to technical information about Windows.

"Neither (division) has gained monopoly status by virtue of secret access to the other's technology," says Softletter editor Tarter.

But not everyone agrees. "The platform and applications are attached at the hip," says Vernon Keenan, an Internet analyst with Keenan Research. "There's so much synergy between them, I could see a separate services company surviving better than an applications company," he adds.

Shaffer says the government's proposal is probably the only way to address the ongoing allegations of Microsoft's application developers being too cozy with operating systems folk.

"Nothing will accomplish what the government wants to short of separating the operating system revenue stream from rest of company," Shaffer says. "As long as Microsoft can use revenues from the operating system to subsidize areas and projects where it would otherwise lose money, we still have the problem."

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