Microsoft To Pay IBM In Antitrust Settlement

Pankaj Arora writes "A settlement has been reached in IBM's private antitrust case against Microsoft. According to the terms of the settlement, Microsoft will pay IBM $775 million cash in addition to $75 million in credit. From the article, 'The settlement resolves all discriminatory pricing and overcharging claims stemming from the U.S. government's mid-1990s antitrust case against Microsoft, the companies said in a statement. The settlement also resolves most other IBM antitrust claims, including those related to its OS/2 operating system and SmartSuite products. IBM's claims of harm to its server hardware and server software businesses are not covered by the settlement, however.'"

Re:Piffle

[Tweak232]

Perhaps I could offer a solution:
If there was any way that anti-trust cases could be tried as criminal cases, it would be great. This is one way that companies can put a dent in microsoft. Did you know that in some criminal cases, they could freeze their assets. That should be crippiling to microsoft.On the other hand, it could also end up like the market fraud cases with the ceos of enron and world com. Still better than just sitting on your hands.

A drop in the bucket

[RealProgrammer]

At $11.24B/year, they make that much in a single month [yahoo.com].

With SmartSuite out of the way, their Office package is the basically the only commercial offering out there. Microsoft's predatory, monopolistic practices easily made the company $850 million this year, and they've been doing it for a lot of years.

Some days, my faith in the system is tested.

Re:Piffle

[adtifyj]

Its not important whether Microsoft notices the drop in the bank balance or not. The continual slaps on the wrist make public display of the bad practises at Microsoft, and that may make others think twice about the yummy lollies MS offers. Also, these payouts put money in the coffers of Microsofts competitors; it may be trivial to Microsoft, but it is real hard cash that allows others to keep competing.

Consider what $850M could buy IBM in terms of OSS software project funding, and the effect that will have on Microsoft.

Re:IBM freed up by sale of PC division

[Anonymous Coward]

"IBM's been in a much less delicate position with Microsoft"

That would be putting in mildy.

With IBM dumping Lenovo, they have effectively purged a cancerous Microsoft division residing withing IBM itself.

Hopefully we will see this start to happen on smaller scales across the business computing world where many companies effectively have their IT department acting as an extension of Microsoft.

Yet this isn't enough

[EMIce]

I believe one facet of this case was Microsoft's intentional breaking of Win 3.1 under Dr. DOS, which had a decent marketshare and better product at the time. They wouldn't be out-designed so they decided to play the bully. Like a kid who wants something so bad he takes it when no one is looking.

Good for IBM, though the market has still not recovered - but yet we've got these goons in Washington taking fat checks [lxer.com] to keep the monopoly going strong. This is no small problem, and it is only going to get worst without some corrective action from congress.

GPL OS/2

[tmbailey123]

Does the resolution of the OS/2 dispute mean that IBM is free to release OS/2 under a GPL license without fear of M$oft legal action ?

As an old OS/2 user, please permit me to say...

[dduck]

...hahahahahaha!
hahahahahahaha!
hahahahahaha!
hahahahahahaha!
hahahahahaha!
hahahahahahaha!
Aaaa-hahahahahaaaa...
Aaaaaaa-hahahahahaaaaahahahahaaaaaaaaaaaa....

Oh well. I guess it's great for IBM that they got paid, but what about the pain of all the BSOD's that we poor users had to contend with for - oh - a decade or so, where we could instead have been using a properly multitasking, threaded and memory protected OS. :( I don't think that pain is ever going to go away (even though it *is* soothed somewhat by the niceness and comfort of OS-X these days).

Re:Piffle

[justforaday]

You people are acting as if this is going to break the company. It's going to feel like a bug bite to them -- sure it'll sting a little bit, and it might even cause them to be a little more careful. That's it. It won't kill them. And besides, things like this are the price of using cutthroat business tactics -- sometimes you get caught and have to pay the price. As for the shareholders, it can be argued that they're somewhat complicit in the whole thing. They are the ones who have been pumping MS stocks up to the levels that they're at, where executive management and the BoD feel it's their "duty" to destroy any and all competition, thus further increasing their shareholder value. If you as a shareholder end up getting hurt by this settlement, maybe you should be paying more attention to the ethics of the companies in which you invest.

Re:Microsoft wins again

[Hollins]

If IBM considers $775M adequate compensation, then the $75M MS credit is irrelevant. They don't have to use it, and can choose not to.

If they want to take a poke at MS, though, they could set up an amnesty program, such that when any company is being muscled by the BSA, funds from the $75M are used to bring that company into compliance for past use, possibly in exchange for adopting IBM software in the future.

Re:Where's the beef?

[Anonymous Coward]

When IBM and MS were working on OS/2 v2, MS split
and started development of Win95 and WinNT. MS stopped helping but IBM was licensing API from MS on OS/2 itself plus using win 3.1 inside OS/2. MS doublecrossed IBM with making win95 not capatable to OS/2. Win NT file system was IBM's HP Filesystem twisted so IBM OS/2 was again incapatable. IBM stayed the course and developed OS/2 Warp (AKA OS/2 version 4.0) without MS help.