AAI on the Kroes-Barnett Microsoft exchange
Here’s the American Antitrust Institute’s take on the Kroes-Barnett exchange.
The oddity of Barnett’s statement is that both Europe and the US found that Microsoft was a monopolist which had acted to harm competition, and both insisted on interoperability in framing a remedy. Both jurisdictions concluded that Microsoft exercised market power in personal computer operating systems, though the specifics of its anticompetitive conduct differed (in one case, protecting its monopoly position by preventing Internet browsers from replacing the operating system as a way for applications programs to run; in the other, leveraging the operating system monopoly into the media player market). And in fashioning a remedy, both required interoperability to assure that independent suppliers of application software can work with the monopoly. The real difference is over the appropriate remedy. Frankly, neither the US remedy nor the European remedy has proven to be very effective. It may be necessary at some point for the Europeans to impose even stronger remedies against Microsoft, such as the break-up originally contemplated by our government. As the inconsistency from one US Administration to the next might suggest, Barnett is far from speaking for a unified US antitrust community.This is similar to my own views. The DOJ’s past actions are quite consistent with the Commission’s case.
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