You don't need to be an expert with a search engine to be aware that one of the most eagerly awaited events this year will be Microsoft's attempt to topple Google with the launch of its own engine. Good luck to it. Competition is good even with a product such as Google, which many users feel (wrongly) cannot be improved.
If Microsoft produces a better search engine, I will be among the first to switch. There is only one proviso - it must be done fairly. There are darker rumours - as the New York Times reported this week - that Microsoft will decide that its search facility should be an integral part of its Windows operating system just as its browser, Internet Explorer, is. You have to hand it to Microsoft. Even to be thinking about this when the European Commission is about to rule on whether the tying of its Media Player to Windows is an abuse of its dominant position shows how confident the company is in fending off governments.
On one issue Microsoft is right: bundling a browser, a music player or a search engine into its operating system will improve the experience for existing Microsoft customers. But that is not the point. Microsoft is different. Its operating system is resident on nearly 95% of the world's personal computers. Nearly all of its $53bn cash mountain was built from a monopoly position that includes Word and Excel. There are lots of benefits attached to having a single operating system (not least standardisation). But these are offset by the difficulty, if not impossibility, of new entrants successfully challenging Microsoft with products competing with in-house MS versions bundled into the operating system.
Microsoft should have been split into two separate companies years ago, with Windows operating as a common carrier, and all applications for it competing against each other in the market place. Interestingly, Microsoft is conspicuously less successful in competing in non-Windows arenas than on its monopoly home territory.
And, of course, if it hadn't earned such large monopoly profits, it would not have been in such a strong position to invest in other (loss-making) areas or gather so many bright graduates at its headquarters. Goodness knows what new products they might have produced elsewhere if they had not been sucked into the Redmond money machine.
Apple is an even worse kind of monopoly in that it integrates its hardware with its operating system and locks buyers into purchasing its components - but it has less than 3% of the market and does not have the deterrent effects on potential competition that Microsoft has.
Amazingly, Microsoft, having been found guilty of illegally maintaining (though not acquiring) a monopoly, carries on as if it was as pure as the driven snow. If Bill Gates wants posterity to write him a lasting epitaph (in Word, of course), he should voluntarily split the company into two quoted companies - operating system and products. That would not only take the wind out of his critics' sails but would also make Microsoft more innovative. And mice might fly.
