This is not to say that what is good for Microsoft is automatically good for California. Indeed, Microsoft competes directly with many well-known California companies, including Apple Computer, Sun Microsystems, and others. Yet, the Microsoft case threatens the long-term health of these companies as well because the regulators may no longer need to prove consumer harm in order to justify interfering in the marketplace. In the Microsoft case, the government failed to demonstrate consumer harm, normally the backbone of any anti-trust case. Rather, anyone who walks into the local Comp USA or Best Buy knows that we continue to benefit from falling prices across the technology sector, including hardware, software, and services.
Consumers purchase computers today with far more power than just six months ago, at the same price.
E-mail, Internet, and other applications that used to cost hundreds of dollars, are now thrown in free. The fact is that genuine consumer harm is nowhere to be found in the governments arguments, or in the Judge s findings of fact. Instead, the real story is how a small group of Microsoft competitors convinced the Clinton Administration to come to their aid by weighing in against their biggest competitor. Court records show that Joel Klein, the Justice Department s point man on the case, took up the Microsoft cause after repeated meetings with Netscape CEO Jim Barksdale. If consumer harm is not central to the Microsoft case, then the door has been flung open for cases against numerous other high-tech companies.