This weekend's Microsoft, DoubleClick and Google news got me to thinking what would result if you took all of Microsoft's personality traits and character issues and created a thirty- or forty-something year old man or woman with these qualities. I came up with a loud, wealthy, badly dressed, overweight, law suit happy, egocentric individual with glaring double standards always complaining about people picking on him or her in between making disparaging remarks about anyone new in town.

Microsoft, a veteran defendant of epic antitrust battles in the United States and Europe, is urging antitrust officials to consider scuttling Google’s plan to buy DoubleClick, an online advertising company.

That's from this New York Times piece by Steve Lohr from yesterday.

It seems to me Microsoft has a DoubleClick double standard. After all, you remember these cases, right?

United States v. Microsoft 87 F. Supp. 2d 30 (D.D.C. 2000) was a court case filed against Microsoft Corporation on May 18, 1998 by the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) and twenty U.S. states. Joel I. Klein was the lead prosecutor. The plaintiffs alleged that Microsoft abused monopoly power in its handling of operating system sales and web browser sales. You can revisit that ordeal here.

The European Union Microsoft antitrust case is a case brought by the European Union (EU) against Microsoft for alleged antitrust abuse. It started as a complaint from Novell over Microsoft's licensing practices in 1993, and eventually resulting in the EU ordering Microsoft to divulge certain information about its server products and a separate version of Microsoft Windows without Windows Media Player. More on that here if you're interested.

If you get a better or different image in your mind, feel free to share it.

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