Browsing for trouble

The federal complaint filed against Microsoft this week raises a gigaheap of questions for regulators to ponder in this Digital Age. Can the law keep up with the blazing speed of technological innovation? When does offering the customer more become a crime? Will Bill Gates’s Evil Empire rule the universe?

The American public might add a query of is own: Does the Justice Department really have this much time on its hands?

Any time one company gets as big as Microsoft, it needs watching. Pre-eminance must not become dominance that squashes competition, innovation must not be stifled, prices must not be fixed. Anti-trust is serious business.

That is what makes Justice’s legal salvo so off target. Microsoft wants computer makers who sell their beeping boxes with Windows inside to include its internet browser, Internet Explorer, as standard equipment. In the software trade, its called bundling.

Here is Microsoft’s position: one of the main reasons people buy computers today is to surf the Web, so selling an operating system without a browser would be like selling a car without a cassette deck. Getting a product to market with features the public wants — what a concept.

The Justice Department worries that such consumer convenience causes enormous harm to the other browser makers, especially Netscape. It’s needless worry, and if anyone at Justice had bought a computer or surfed the Web lately, they’d know why.

First, a computer just off the shelf is about as interactive as a toaster. You need internet access and for that you need a service provider. Sign up, pay the monthly fee, get the connection and get the software, including a browser. Nine times out of 10, it’s Netscape. Now, you have two choices — Netscape and Explorer. Try them out, decide which you like, trash the other. Feel free to send Explorer to the recycling bin. The Microsoft Police will never know.

Second, Microsoft is not preventing any computer maker from installing another browser in its machines — IBM and Compaq include Netscape in their bundles. Microsoft just insists that the Windows offered is what it considers to be the complete package.

And third, Justice probably would not be rushing so to Netscape’s aid if they’d read the financial pages once in a while. Netscape’s third quarter earnings exceeded expectations in a big way, sales are up by 50 percent from a year ago to $150 million. Hardly a struggling start-up on the ropes.

It may be too much to ask that the federal government’s legal arm focus its awesome powers on real scourges that matter to real people — drug cartels, kiddie porn and presidential coffees for starters. But hectoring Microsoft gets headlines, targets this big are easy to hit, soaking the rich is always popular. If Justice’s trust-busters are looking for trouble, they’ll have to browse harder than this.