At first, but a big part of their competitive advantage will be gone, insofar as each company will no longer be privy to the plans and strategies of the other parts. The Office company will get the new APIs at the same time as Corel, Netscape, and everyone else, putting everyone on an equal footing for developing their product; rather, it leaves it up to the programmers and business leaders at each company to make a better product, rather than relying on a head start from a brother department.
It can be legislated as part of a consent decree governing the breakup: A, B, and C may not enter into certain business relationships with each other exclusively, or something like that. If B wants early access to the APIs, A can licence them to B, and then must licence them to anyone else willing to pay the same, non-prohibitive price.
With 2 or 3 bells, there can be real competition. If it comes down to a merger of the last 2 or 3, the Justice department can disapprove of the merger/purchase and squash it.
There probably won’t be an immediate drop in price for any of those things. IE will always be free because its direct competitors are free (check out mozilla, it’s already way better), and it has been free - try getting someone to pay for the new version when the old version is just as good, and was a free download anyway.
What will probably happen is that the next generation of office products from Microsoft will be more aggressively marketed on their strengths, and not as a Microsoft solution. Competing office suites like Star Office and Applixware will gain market share, and the price for office suites will drop overall with several good solutions. I’ve used Star Office, and it’s as complete as Office97 for everything we do at our workplace, and we pay tens of thousands to licence Office; as IS Manager, I could very easily recommend that we switch to Star Office, which is fully compatible with MS file formats, as good as Office for our needs, and free to install and use internally (licencing fees come in for repackaging it as part of something else you’re selling). Once Star Office can claim as tight an integration with the OS as Office can, it’s the price that will decide for me.
I don’t see how prices can increase afterwards, especially with free or low-priced competitors available that can justifiably claim that they’re as good. If Office is spun off from Windows, one of the first things that will happen is Office will be ported to Linux, the BSDs, and BeOS. Higher volume sales = lower prices.
That’s very cynical. Have any evidence to support it?
A lot of politicians have made hay over this, but that doesn’t mean the whole process is entirely politically driven. As I pointed out earlier, monopoly busting has gone on under Ford, Reagan and Bush, as well as democrats. It’s the Justice department pushing it, and I don’t think any president could simply shut down the investigation. These are, after all, criminal matters, and are most subject to the discretion of prosecutors and judges, not pols.
I think we need a legal opinion on the ability of the president to impede or end a criminal investigation. It didn’t help Clinton during Starr’s tenure, did it? Besides, Jackson’s findings of fact are now part of the record, and findings of fact are almost impossible to overturn or dismiss. Any company can now sue Microsoft for monopoly damages, and half their case is proven for them, that Microsoft is an abusive monopoly. Ending the DOJ investigation now, prior to the penalty phase, doesn’t change that.
Besides, do you really take seriously a politician on the campaign trail making a promise he knows is popular to make?
Never attribute to an -ism anything more easily explained by common, human stupidity.