Hi Charles. RE: their goal was not to make money from sales of IE...
And I agree. And I think that was fair, in business. Why do you think that is unfair? Unfortunately, it plays against our notions of fairness when a agressive, gargantuan, cash-soaked monolith aims at a tiny little startup. It goes against all notions of fairness. Know what I mean? It goes against certain expected, shared social/moral intuitions we share regarding right, wrong and fair. Unfortuantely, business is none of those, it just has to be legal.
I live near an OSH department store. A Home Depot has opened across the street from it. They could well be operating at a loss, but they are looking to put OSH out of business. I mean, isn't it standard in the market place to use loss leaders and such to compete? I know K-Mart was using this strategy for quite a while to put their competitiors out of business.
Business is often been defined in terms of war. Business management gurus often cite vicious, horrible war mongers and hold up their brilliant strategies as something from which leaders in business should glean insight from, admire and follow. Yep, they have a lot in common, but mainly the common method of winning- beat the shit out of the opponent in any way possible.
What do you think?
Jon :) |
