Industry Exchange

"Is the U.S. Department Of Justice 'Off-Line' in A Wired World?"

Michael Froomkin

associate professor

University of Miami School of Law

"Recent research shows that bundling features into programs to create what is sometimes called "bloatware" provides economic advantages to software manufacturers. If that's correct, this suggests a new form of natural monopoly-an obvious source of concern to antitrust regulators. It may well be that the Justice Department is right up to date, or even ahead of the times, not behind them."

Jim Wells

managing director

Furash & Co.

"It's too easy to bash the government. The importance of an integrated browser into interactive software has increased astronomically in the last two years since the Department of Justice last ruled on the relative competitiveness of the Microsoft suite of products. The Department of Justice will need to conduct its current investigation using vastly different paradigms than it did just several years ago."