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Technology Stocks : How high will Microsoft fly?
MSFT 492.01+1.3%Nov 28 12:59 PM EST

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To: Chris Baker who wrote (7945)5/24/1998 10:19:00 PM
From: Dwight E. Karlsen  Read Replies (1) of 74651
 
But Janet Reno said that Microsoft is being sued because consumers have been harmed.

1. Microsoft's alleged tie-in contracts - Such as tieing MS Office with the OS: Even if this does contribute to the dominance of MS Office, the contracts weren't illegal. But because of the MS OS dominance, perhaps Microsoft should not have done these tie-ins. Naughty naughty! MSFT gets fined, hopefully not excessively (of course we all know that the fines will be excessive - that's what this is all about - getting some of MSFT's money).

2. Alleged unsavory business practices - "unsavory" does not equal illegal. The memos I've seen excerpted in the news media so far only document an aggressive sales team with a competitive spirit, which doesn't want to roll over when they hear a competitor has a "Kill Microsoft" sign at their headquarters.

3. Predatory pricing -- In other words, consumers have been getting too good of a deal from MSFT, thus forcing NSCP to deviate from their stated IPO prospectus plan of giving away their browser for free. Netscape needed the funds, and so charged for their browser, in addition to the usual hefty fee from web sites running the Netscape SuiteSpot internet server software.

Microsoft continued to give away their browser free. Microsoft is predatory. Uh huh. Make the consumers pay more to Microsoft because of Netscape's inability to make a profit.

Consumers haven't been harmed yet of course, but if the government has their way, consumers will be harmed.
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