Craig, RE: MSFT monopoly
MSFT did not, IHO, use there monopoly power to win the Office wars. They did it with great marketing and good products. I switched from Wordperfect to MS Word in 89. Why because it was easier to use. I switched from Quattro to Excel because its interface felt more familiar, to MS Word. I switched from Borland C/C++ to MS Visual C++ because MS made a good product and gave me better support. Notice a trend. They delivered good and sometimes great products and marketed them very well. Sometimes it just came down to price or support.
They leveraged their sales in other areas to compete on price in the Office wars. They did not even start the price war as I recall (Borland did I think?), but they won the war. Now were is Borland? They are near dead on the battlefield and now changed name to something lame (Intprise(?) or something like that. The new leaders in middleware. They are going nowhere. JMO)
The same thing is/was going on in the HDD sector. The only difference is that everybody lost(again), and now they will be slightly less competitive for a couple more years and do it all over again. So if you missed low stock prices on SEG, WDC, QNTM give it 3-5 years and you will get another chance.
Let's punish all industry leader for being really good at what they do. Let's help slow the economy by discouraging large corporations from doing well. I think they tried something like this in socialist countries and I don't see this as an incentive to do well. Historically meritocracies did extremely well.
As far as having MSFT buy their competition. Yea, now I want the government planning corporate mergers too. NOT!!!! <g> I know we were kidding, but I basically don't want the government involved. The technology industry is moving to fast for the government to deal with. They will just screw it up. How would you like the government to mess with the Compaq/DEC merger?? Not me, I want to make money...
And I feel that both companies together will be much better than they were apart 1+1=3.
Small government can be a good thing too. Less taxes, less debt, and more personal liberty and responsibility placed on each citizen. If we are truly the land of the free than we need the freedom to choose, and the wisdom to be responsible for our actions.
JMO,
Christopher
PS Some would prefer the government to take care of all of us, and thus we would have sheep for citizens. This country was not founded by sheep, nor will it be strong as a nation of sheep. We need leaders with vision who can control their zippers!!! (Bush=no vision, Clinton=no vision/zipper control)
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"Those who will give up essential liberty to secure a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty or safety."
-- Ben Franklin |
