In the stock market turmoil that followed the court's ruling, Microsoft's share price tumbled, costing Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer, and thousands of other Microsoft employees tens of billions of dollars in lost net worth. But it's still not clear how any of this benefited us, the average consumers of personal computing products. I can't wait. For my money, if the antitrust bright lights want to do some real good, they should stroll through any grocery store and note that every major brand of peanut butter costs exactly the same. Ditto for tuna fish, milk, eggs, and the other items we spend money on every week.
None dare call it collusion.
My point is that we consumers get the business every day from monopolistic and illegal practices all around us. So far, all the Justice Department has done about it is make the computer marketplace a little safer for Oracle, Sun Microsystems, and the other Microsoft competitors that have been pushing the government for relief from Microsoft's competitive onslaught. I'm willing to believe that some of Microsoft's business practices should be stopped. That still leaves the question of what is the appropriate punishment for the company and its executives. Maybe the government should just go up to Redmond and take away all their computers.