RealNetworks sues Microsoft
Reuters - Internet media company RealNetworks Inc. said on Thursday that it is suing longtime rival Microsoft Corp. for violating antitrust laws by using its monopoly to promote its own software for playing audio and video on computers and over the Internet.
In a complaint filed in federal court in San Jose, California, RealNetworks claimed that Microsoft "pursued a broad course of predatory conduct over a period of years by abusing its monopoly power, resulting in substantial lost revenue and business for RealNetworks." [Yahoo! News - Technology]
RealNetworks may like to think that it's doing poorly because big, bad Microsoft is behaving like the tech Mafia. But I don't think that's the real issue (the pun was unintentional).
The reason why RealNetworks is doing poorly is because RealAudio stinks. It used to be a decent player. Now it attempts to take over your computer. The only reliable way to disable the scheduler, for example, is to delete the scheduling program - and how many people know how to do that? And who knows how much information it was sending about you when running?
I finally got fed up with RealAudio repeatedly reassociating my files, hogging my memory, and nagging me with stupid updates, and so I completely uninstalled it. Windows Media Player did not factor into my decision at all, as I rarely even use that. RealNetworks has only themselves to blame for their troubles.
December 18, 2003 05:11 PMOn top of which, their reasoning against Microsoft sounds like Howard Dean explaing why capitalism is wrong. Guess that will be in one of his speeches next week! VIVA BUSH! VIVA BUSH!! VIVA BUSH!!!
Pondered by Jeffrey Price at December 19, 2003 09:02 AMyah, i hate real player. i have it, because it's sometimes necessary. but i hate the interface and all the notices.
Pondered by abe at December 19, 2003 09:22 AM