c. 1998 Religion News Service
(Andrew M. Greeley is a Roman Catholic priest, best-selling novelist and a sociologist at the University of Chicago National Opinion Research Center. Check out his home page at http://www.agreeley.com or contact him via e-mail at agreel(at)aol.com.)
UNDATED _ I hate _ yes hate! _ Microsoft.
Of all their wares, the one I hate the most is the one that got it in trouble with the feds _ Internet Explorer. I have tried to install it four different times _ in various versions and manifestations _ and it simply won’t work. Moreover, it won’t go away even when I uninstall it, but leaves phantoms behind that foul-up other applications.
So I’m sticking with Netscape, indeed, with Netscape 2.2, because I am unable to download more recent versions of it even though it purports to make that possible. You’d think a company which claims it is the victim of monopolistic oppression would try harder, wouldn’t you?
I also hate Windows 95, which is clunky, awkward, and unreliable. I hate Publisher, which misbehaves every time I try to do my newsletter. I hate Word, which is bloated and gets bigger _ but not better _ with every revision.
Yet I think the harassing of Microsoft _ and the chip maker Intel _ in the federal courts is of the same order of justice as that of Independent Prosecutor Kenneth”Judge”Starr and his off-the-wall-attack not only on President Clinton but on the whole American system of law.
Both are being done for all the wrong reasons.
Microsoft’s fault appears to be that it has been too successful and therefore must be brought down. Its system and its programs are not very good, _ even hateful _ but they’re better than any competitor.
Word Perfect is a farce. Unex is nice, but who uses it. And let us say nothing about IBM’s much touted but diabolic and unlamented OS-2. If it were not for Microsoft _ and Intel _ it is unlikely most of us would be using desktop computers.
If anyone can do what Microsoft does, only better, even marginally better, they have a good chance of either making it or being bought out by Microsoft.
It may be that Microsoft cheated in its battle with Netscape, though it is hard to tell. If so, punish it; if not, leave it alone if it can do what Netscape did only better. My vote is with the famous dictum of Chicago sports writer Warren Brown about the 1945 World Series between the Chicago Cubs and the Detroit Tigers:”I don’t see how either team can possibly win.” The hilarity of the government’s messing with the computer industry, however, becomes apparent when one notes the government’s passivity in the face of the merger mania sweeping American business _ banks gobble up other banks, airlines swallow other airlines, phone companies buy out other phone companies, etc. Competition? Someone has to be kidding!
Thus NationsBank and BankAmerica merge (why they leave out the space between the two words baffles me) while Banc One (why the weird spelling?) sweeps into Chicago and picks off First Chicago. And now Wells Fargo, which messed up terribly in its devouring of First Interstate, wants to try it again, this time with Norwest (maybe those guys really can’t spell).
This mania is good for the American economy? It does not lessen competition in the banking industry? Gimme a break!
As a Business Week study showed a year ago, most mergers benefit only the corporate officers of the merged companies. Stockholders lose wealth and employees lose jobs. Customers? Who cares about them.
Does anyone seriously believe a vast, imperial bureaucracy can render more efficient and sensitive service to local customers than a bank down the street?
Big is only beautiful to men whose income and prestige is enhanced by standing at the top of every corporate Godzilla _ muscle bound, incompetent monsters, and, it would appear from their names, illiterate at that.
Small may not be beautiful, but big is surely ugly.
Nor is there any evidence that, for example, the carpetbaggers from Banc One (what an embarrassment to have a name like that in Chicago) have ever done anything to prove their superiority over those they have swallowed up, or produced anything socially useful at all, much less something that works even minimally as well as Windows 95.
Unless the feds display more concern than they have about the merger mania in our country, their attack on Microsoft is little more than a self-serving hunt for publicity.
DEA END GREELEY
