Keep an eye on the rising Sun

The American high priest of consumer protection, Ralph Nader, last week rallied his forces against the AOL/Netscape deal.

It's bad for consumers, he argued, because the new giant would tower over other Internet service providers, leaving consumers less choice. He wants the US Department of Justice (DoJ) to investigate.

But wait. That argument sounds rather familiar. After all, it was Nader who pushed the DoJ into its current offensive on the allegedly monopolistic Microsoft.

While we can appreciate that Nader sticks to his anti-trust principles no matter the opponent, he's shooting himself in the foot on this one. It's tautological: you can't have two monopolies. Although AOL/Netscape and Microsoft won't battle over precisely the same territories, their operations do overlap significantly when it comes to the Web. So make up your mind, Ralph.

Nader's missing the monopoly mark by gunning for AOL - Sun Microsystems is the one to watch. If Sun has its way, Microsoft and its operating system are doomed to be yesterday's technology. While users have been cheering on the righteous Californians in their battle to keep Java pure, they've forgotten this: Java may be cross-platform, but all those license fees are flowing to only one industry player. Sun plans to replace the operating system monopoly with the Java monopoly.

Lately Sun has made noises about loosening its chokehold on Java. We'll see. But the lure of big money is so very close it would be absolutely altruistic of Sun to make Java an open standard now.

Maybe someone needs to push them. Any takers, Ralph?