Andrew Orlowski has an interesting story on the Register today about the mystery of Dell's Linux drive. He's following up an equally interesting Infoworld interview with Michael Dell, in which he appears to resort to odd hand signals as he attempts to explain why, only weeks after his company announced investments in desktop Linux a couple of years back, Dell's Linux business unit was shut down.
Dell doesn't confirm or deny that Microsoft twisted his company's collective arm to make sure it didn't aid the Linux cause too much. But Orlowski reminds us how upset Microsoft was about Dell's plans to invest in Linux at the time, as shown in a deposition given to the courts by Steve Ballmer last year. When Ballmer talks of showing "the beauty of what we do" to Dell, we can hazard a guess as to just how hard that point was made. The threat of a big jump in Windows license charges, at least, would have resonated at a PC maker that operates in the most cut-throat part of the PC market.
Given the evidence we've seen in the past of Microsoft's bullying of partners, and other anticompetitive behaviour when it comes to killing off potential rivals, we could safely conclude they used every trick in the book to make sure the PC maker got back in line. And if Dell could be bullied by MS, you don't need to be a genius to see how other companies, and other innovations in the market, have been nixed by the software giant. This is what abusive monopolies do. And Dell still won't talk about it.
One point: Orlowski adds that Dell "confusingly" refers to still selling Linux options, although they are "extremely hard to find". I found a page describing the Linux options in under 60 seconds by typing Linux into the Dell.com search engine, although by the other way of navigating - click by click - it is harder to find.
