DoJ, What Took You So Long?
Many are surprised by a story first published by the New York Post: that the perennial underdog, Apple Computers, is being investigated by the DoJ for monopolistic practices. Actually, I'm a bit surprised that the DoJ didn't start an investigation until now. I love my iPod, but discussions of Apple's monopolistic (or Microsoftistic?) practices didn't just start with Steve's Job's pronouncement about Flash. With a quick Google, I picked up a story in PC World from way back in September 2007: "People love iPods... But iPods come bundled with iTunes. Want to buy music from Apple? Guess what? You must install iTunes. Want an Apple cell phone from AT&T? Yep! ITunes is required even if you want only to make phone calls. Want to buy ringtones for your Apple phone? ITunes... Apple not only "bundles" iTunes with multiple products, it forces you to use it. At least with Internet Explorer, you could always just download a competitor and ignore IE."
The writer then goes on to describe Apple's other monopolistic practices: such as price gouging, copying features, and pushing everyone around and dictating terms to partners. He then concluded that:

"I come not to bury Apple, but to support it... All that evil monopoly hype, court cases and public posturing directed for so long at Microsoft drained energy and resources from the entire industry. The market, however, corrects issues such as that. In the case of Microsoft's "monopoly," Linux, Firefox and now Apple prove that customers always had choices. The same goes for Apple."

I think that the point of the DoJ's investigation is not that Apple is preventing customers from having choices, but that they're trying to prevent developers from having choices. And preventing developers from having choices drains energy and resources from the industry. Let's hope that this can be settled quickly out of court and that Apple will begrudgingly will support Flash, even passively. Then, the free market of ideas and products can prevail.

Louis Gordon
Written on Thursday, 06 May 2010 07:03 by Louis Gordon

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