Microsoft Not Going Down In The Fifth

Microsoft sees itself as a boxer refusing to throw a match for the fixers -- or in this case, the EU Competition Commission. But in reality, Microsoft is a palooka throwing a tantrum because the boxing commission won't let him fight with a roll of quarters in his fists anymore.Like an over-the-hill, punch-drunk boxer distracted by the sting of pride, Microsoft thinks it can get away with double-crossing the Commission with a one-two IE combination, but it's telegraphing those punches and fooling no one.

Microsoft made its hissy fit known to the world during the preliminary weigh-in yesterday, saying that it's going to strip Internet Explorer out of Windows 7, which is launching this October, in order to avoid "large fines."

Dave Heiner, Microsoft's deputy general counsel tried to rope-a-dope, blogging that Microsoft believes

Note how he puts bundling in quotes, as if Microsoft hadn't been doing precisely that -- bundling a roll of quarters under its operating system.

And there's not much subtlety in the way Heiner lets European consumers know whom to blame for not having "benefits that will be available in the rest of the world."

The suits don't want us to win because it's bad for the TV ratings.

In response to this posturing, the EU's Competition Committee jabbed that "consumers should be offered a choice of browser... not that Windows should be supplied without a browser at all."

If anything, though, the Commission is pulling its punches, faintly praising Microsoft's approach with regards to manufacturers because "computer manufacturers would appear to be able to choose" between IE and/or other browsers.

Why does the Commission seem to be pulling its punches? Maybe because Microsoft is showing signs of having taken too many blows to the head. It used to be cute when Microsoft lectured us about reality, kind of like hearing Muhammad Ali's raps. Remember that funny stuff Microsoft used to say about open source being utopian and communist (never mind that much of the technology underlying the Internet -- like Apache servers and the Linux kernel -- are open source); or Steve Ballmer saying that the entire world is wrong about software-as-a-service?

But lately, it's been a little sad hearing Microsoft refuse to acknowledge how far it's fallen from atop the IT rankings. In fact, the fight is moving to a whole new arena -- mobile devices -- where Microsoft is ranked well behind Symbian, iPhone, Android and WebOS.

Ballmer recently said that the previous fifteen years of economic growth should be seen as the exception -- the blue bird in his words -- and that reality (he calls it an economic reset) resembles the pre-Internet days when it was a young contender. Like many people who age and fall out of step with their times, Ballmer is waxing nostalgic about a time before Microsoft was tried in U.S. courts as a monopolist, when it was still the peerless Axis of WinTel -- the Champ.

Thus Microsoft still thinks it can punish the EU by yanking its browser away from consumers. That it can thumb its nose at the Commission and still come out a winner. But there isn't a buddy moment in its future with Neelie Kroes in a cellar, and there isn't a chopper waiting outside with the keys there for the taking. Microsoft is more like Vincent Vega waiting for Butch to come back for his watch, and the Pop Tart setting off a smoke detector. It's toast, only it's too far gone to know it.