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The recent strong arm tactics that Microsoft has used lately has
put their previous control efforts to shame. Microsoft aims to
control as much content, software, and (by default) hardware as it
can. This, I'm sure, is normal. Market dominance is the goal of all
corporations.
However, their latest effort really oversteps the boundaries.
Smart Tags allow Microsoft to kick independent web developers
hard and where it hurts. If you're not up to speed on Smart Tags,
there is plenty of reading material out there.
Microsoft is slowly coming to the point where people and
companies will finally galvanize themselves to fight back. As their
control creeps over the desktop, backend, and Web in general,
things are pretty grim.
Now is the time for companies that, at most, ignore each other
to start taking a serious look at forming alliances that
will help them withstand the new onslaught from Microsoft.
An example of this can be found in the airline industry. For
many years, Boeing was pretty
much the only game in town for large jets. The Europeans decided
that they wanted to play in the jet building market as well.
However, no single company could possibly take on the hugely
expensive task of building an airline manufacturer. So, the
Europeans (with lots of tax breaks from their governments) form a
new company called Airbus
that they would manage jointly, with every participating country
contributing money and resources to the final product.
This type of model (minus the government support) might be a
solution for competing with Microsoft in the computer market. As it
stands, no single company (with the possible exception of AOL) can
hope to take on Microsoft in it's own space. A group of companies
with a common goal ("Let's give Microsoft a run for its money!")
would offer Microsoft some real competition.
Apple could easily play a leading role in this type of
organization. While Sun and IBM might offer server hardware, and
Linux/Unix could offer backend support, Apple could offer OS X
as the OS for the new organization. Apple might even be able to
handle the consumer arm of the organization with its spiffy
hardware designs. Add hardware manufacturers to the pot and things
would get really interesting.
Of course, this is just a pipe dream. All the organizations
involved would have to give up some cherished control over their
products to make something like this work properly. Apple, the
freakiest control freak of the bunch, would hardly see any real
gain in bringing Microsoft to heel. If the organization managed to
do that, what would the next step be? World domination or a gradual
fracturing of the companies similar to what happened to the Soviet
Union?
The incentive to try something like this seems to be getting
stronger every day, though.
Stephen Van
Esch is the founder and president of
the
E-learning Foundry, an online training
resource for Mac users. Steve loves the Mac and is doubly bilingual,
since he's also fluent in Windows and French.
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