Too Rich to Win

ANY normal person would have found in Judge Thomas P. Jackson’s “finding of fact” in the Microsoft case an invigorating tale of battle, maneuver, and compromise in the high-tech marketplace. Indeed, a normal person would conclude that things had worked out amazingly well for consumers. We have cheap, powerful desktop computers that we wouldn’t have dreamed of ten years ago. We have access to a cornucopia of resources and information, via the Internet, that would have been unimaginable even five years ago.

But such a person would discover— to his surprise—that, as a result of Judge Jackson’s findings, there suddenly exists a real prospect that Microsoft, a company that did more than any other to make all of this possible, will be forcibly broken up as a kind of public nuisance.

HJ

About the Author

Holman W. Jenkins Jr.

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Department of Justice

Technology

Internet

ANY normal person would have found in Judge Thomas P. Jackson’s “finding of fact” in the Microsoft case an invigorating tale of battle, maneuver, and compromise in the high-tech marketplace. Indeed, a normal person would conclude that things had worked out amazingly well for consumers. We have cheap, powerful desktop computers that we wouldn’t have dreamed of ten years ago. We have access to a cornucopia of resources and information, via the Internet, that would have been unimaginable even five years ago.

But such a person would discover— to his surprise—that, as a result of Judge Jackson’s findings, there suddenly exists a real prospect that Microsoft, a company that did more than any other to make all of this possible, will be forcibly broken up as a kind of public nuisance.