WCS: re: "Because Microsoft couldn't ethically or legally charge people for software that they didn't request, it had
to give the software away for free, and for years, that's exactly what Microsoft did."
#1, you're making the erroneous assumption that Gateway didn't have to pay Microsoft for the copies of MS-Office it (Gateway) bundled with its computers. Why would you jump to such a ridiculous conclusion?
#2, Wasn't IBM bundling Lotus Suite onto its computers? These copies were in fact "given away for free", since IBM owned Lotus. So IBM was the real predatory pricing perpetrator, not Microsoft.
These are just two major factual errors in your article; I would do a bit more research before I submitted that for any publication.
There are other erroneous conclusions you reach, for example your example of how Microsoft's charging a good price (not too high, not too low) is "predatory pricing". Every business charges the maximum the market will bear, to get the most revenues (i.e. not too high, but low enough to stimulate sales). You also imply that having a high market share of any profitable product catagory is automatically illegal. That's nonsense, of course. You also imply that having a good gross profit margin is somehow illegal. Nonsense!
By your definition, Qualcomm should be the next target of the Dept. of Justice:
Qualcomm owns CDMA technology, and collects license revenue (i.e. Win95/98/NT license revenue). I hear CDMA is quite popular in the U.S. Qualcomm's profit margins on this license revenue is around 85-90%!!!
Surely that is evil, and those illegal monopolist profits should be disgorged to Qualcomm's competitors and the government. I bet Qualcomm even tries to "strike deals", "bundles", etc. Just start digging; looks like you've got a brilliant investigative journalism career ahead of you, rooting out all the evil monopolists in our society. Congrats. |
