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Microsoft settles for ''$1.1 billion'' . . . in a different lawsuit
Posted by James Grimmelmann on Saturday, January 11 @ 11:52:13 EST Consumers
Microsoft announced that it has settled with the plaintiffs in a California class action antitrust lawsuit based on its overcharging consumers and and businesses for Windowses 95 and 98. The suit covers more than 50 milion licenses; the settlement is "worth" $1.1 billion But . . . the refunds will be issued in the form of vouchers good for discounts on various hardware and software products. Could you use one for a discount on an iMac or a Linux support contract? It's not clear from the story.

On the other hand, the vouchers do represent 30% of all Microsoft's monopoly rents, I mean revenue, from sales in California over a seven-year period, and most of them will go to businesses, which could see, in effect, refunds in the tens of thousands of dollars. Any unclaimed amounts will be donated to California public schools . . . partly in Microsoft software. Oh, joy.

Full story here.

 
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Settlements (Score: 0)
by Anonymous on Sunday, January 12 @ 03:38:59 EST
I'm tired of seeing settlements including tax deductable dontations and free products. The music settlement had similar issues. How exactly does donating software to schools hurt Microsoft. Not only is it free advertising and training of future customers, but it is something the company was likely to do anyway.


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Punished with free marketing? (Score: 0)
by Anonymous on Monday, January 13 @ 08:04:35 EST
According to the SEC, Microsoft over-charges about 5 times what the free market prices would be for MS-Windows and MS-Office. Conversely, they're losing loads of money on everthing else. If the California settlement were actually worth anything to the citizens and businesses of California, the price of MS-Windows and MS-Office would come down 60%-80%. However, that would mean that all of Microsoft's ventures would be money-losers. The settlement's not final, but either way, it looks like another dot-com entering a death spiral. Users burned by License 6 or by a Business Software Alliance audit are going to be looking elsewhere. Likewise, Microsoft has often fallen flat in the area of security and stability and historically the company has failed to deliver on its promises time and again. License 6' prohibition of publishing evaluations (publication of benchmarks) merely attempts to hide the problem and lets their technology quietly fall further behind Apple and Linux on the desktop and Solaris/BSD/Linux/Novell in the server room.


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