Linux on Netbooks: The Smoking Gun (Groklaw)

The end-to-end monopoly from the hardware vendor through to retail outlets is the thing that no regulator seems to have been bothered to address. Instead, we've had complaints about Web browsers and media players being bundled with Windows from companies with their own vested interests. If Apple had QuickTime bundled with Windows for a nice fee or Real Networks and AOL/Netscape had each received a nice cheque, those companies would have been quite content with Microsoft's market position.

Now, some people insist that "consumers want Windows" and thus don't want a choice, or would find a choice confusing. Others insist that it's in the economic interest of the hardware vendors to ship Windows, not only because of the perceived demand, but also because they can offset the cost of the licence with fees from software and service companies who want to advertise their products by pre-loading trial versions and other nonsense onto those vendors' machines. (Removing such software is presumably less confusing to "consumers" than offering them a fairly clean GNU/Linux distribution in the first place, even though some retailers apparently offer services to "clean up" the average Windows installation on a new computer, keeping those goalposts on the move defining what is and isn't confusing.) Regulatory solutions won't work while other incentives can be mobilized to keep the convenient anti-competitive arrangements exactly as they are now.

Just like in some countries around the sale of phones and Internet/telephony services, there should be price transparency when buying a computer: exactly what the subsidies are, how much is being paid for the Windows licence (and by who), should be public knowledge. And to stop the shuffling of figures between the columns, it should be possible to say that you want just the hardware. This doesn't need regulatory intervention - it just needs robust purchaser protection laws properly enforced.

The Wintel duopoly is back with a vengeance. It's interesting how Intel is not even mentioned, whereas prior speculation on ARM netbooks is that it's not Microsoft that will be the problem (since you can already get Linux-based netbooks) but Intel.

Add to that the discriminatory pricing on the Atom (cheaper to buy as a package than to get the standalone CPU, meaning nVidia cannot really compete in providing chipsets), and one has a feeling that the main reason Asus pulled out its Snapdragon prototype is that Intel threatened their Atom supply.

And the saddest thing is seeing articles like this http://www.newsweek.com/id/198855 which was published on the Jun 1st issue.

I am a subscriber of the (paper) magazine and thus I wrote them a letter at letters @ youguessthedomain hoping that they will publish it. Basically I told them that I welcome Google scrutiny (every large company deserve to be controlled), but that Microsoft share of the operating system market (more than 90%, with a very strong user lock-in) should be under much tougher antitrust scrutiny than the relatively benign 70% Google share of search engine market, which does not have user lock-in.

You might want to have your voice heard too.

Have a look at this too:
http://www.pcworld.com/article/169919/5_netbooks_microsof...