Hey Microsoft Lawyers! Your Solution.
Listen guys. So you have a monopoly. Duh! That's why we bought your stock in the first place. No did you really harm consumers?
Here is what a fellow poster (Duke) said.
Like IBM, who wanted to charge $5000 a pc. or when they lost the lock on the bios, wanted to trick everyone back in to being locked in with the "microchannel"?
Or Lotus, who charged $495 for a spread sheet?
Or like Gary Kindall (rest in peace) who was out surfing while MS was working day and night.
Or the phone companies, still backed by government mandated monopoly, that want to charge long distance to use the internet?
This case is SO simple to beat now, it's funny.
MSFT CAN MAKE THE CASE THAT THEY WERE THE FIRST MASS MARKET SOFTWARE COMPANY THAT WOULD RATHER SELL A MILLION AT A BUCK RATHER THAN THE OTHERS THAT WERE SELLING ONE AT A MILLION.
PULL OUT THE OLD BASIC SOFTWARE ADS FROM MICRO-SOFT OF BILL SELLING BASIC...AND PROVE THAT WAS HOW IT STARTED. THEN SHOW IBM'S BIG ASS ADS IN THE WALL STREET JOURNAL AT THE TIME. THAT ONE AD WAS MORE THAN MSFT'S ENTIRE SALES FOR THE YEAR.
Explain how hard it was to work, and how agressive others were at trying to KILL THEM.
Explain how everyone laughed about a graphical interface and how Version 1 and 2 flopped so bad, it was disaster.
Explain about how version 3 came out, and couldn't do networking.
NOW YOU CAN continue this story on your own, but you've got to appeal to the story here.
IBM was around for 50 years and low and behold, here comes a company with NOTHING and creates a monopoly in 15 years. How.
Here's how.
1: IBM was content kicking serious ass with expensive stuff, and
2: MSFT was convinced that selling millions was better than none.
Get out your 15 year company sales goals, and show that,
"Who the hell ever thought there would be 60 million PC's and we'd be fricken huge. We didn't even know that.
YOU'RE ALLOWED TO HAVE A MONOPOLY IF YOU DO NOT HARM CONSUMERS.
With the drop in software pricing, your are the Mr. Ford of software.
And what the hell is wrong with that! |
