Well, maybe not exactly. But neither the evil empire of yore, according to this recent post from Mary Jo Foley. Writing in response to the upcoming resolution of Microsoft's appeal of the landmark European Union anti-trust ruling against the company, handed down in 2004, MJ argues that either way you slice it, today's Microsoft just isn't the ferocious, un-ethical competitor it was in the trailing decades of the last century.

While she points out these changes aren't necessarily because Steve and Bill have turned into big old softies, but rather as a result of pressure from new markets, US DOJ, and the EU, nonetheless the effect has been that the company has gotten away from many practices which it is still tarred with. In fact, most managers there are hyper-aware of the perception of monopolostic behavior and go out of their way to avoid it.

I think this is somewhat true; I can think of internal decisions I am aware of which only make sense in that light, which in fact make the company's products less competitive than the could be even under DOJ restraints, just because they are avoiding even the perception of unethical practice. And certainly there is less opportunity for such blatant exercise of monopoly power while under such scrutiny (well-earned scrutiny) as the company is today-MJ has a laundry list of dirty tricks which the old Microsoft wouldn't have hesitated to play in the past which they haven't touched today.

But I think too that in fact the company has improved its PR skills and simply gone to ground with some of the more insidious mechanisms of controlling the market, and that the combination of spin and the fact that they have deepened their hold on the corporate and consumer desktop dramatically prevents them from being called out on it. The Windows Genuine Advantage initiative, subscription licensing programs, and other such mechanisms designed to build their capabilities to monitor and control the use of their products smack of monopolistic practice to me, and the fact that they have not garnered more attention and negative reaction over these practices yet indicates that they have better learned to disguise their intent and to play the long game.

I know as well as anyone that Microsoft staff and managers are just people, and they're no more inherently evil than any other people, but they like to win, and they're very clever, and neither the EU nor the DOJ is going to prevent that if Microsoft seriously puts their mind to it and the market allows it.