Monopolies Can Never Do Wrong?
RE:'"Wow..that seems to me to be pretty big news...will MSFT actually be manufacturing computers I wonder? "
Right now, Microsoft makes only $89-$200 per box, right? Box makers make even less due to competition among themselves, right?
What if, like Apple, Microsoft were allowed to knock off the box companies one-by-one until they had them all. (Except IBM/OS2, of course) Then they could bring order into the box marketplace by eliminating wasteful competition among box makers by setting, lets say, a $600 industry wide built-in profit on hardware. Then Microsoft could feature the Windows OS as free, making Bill Gates a consumer hero, right?
Theoretically, Microsoft is currently in an excellent position to make its own hardware or to regulate (read blackmail here) hardware development to secure its position without having to compete for it.
In the long term, we will all be dead. But, what would be the short and intermediate term operating system options be for Dell, Gateway, and the other box makers be if Microsoft were to leverage its current Intel OS Monopoly into hardware dominance by selectively refusing to sell its product or as is more likely offer it on grossly unacceptable terms? Answer: none. Could any one of these box makers survive the short or intermediate term to wait out a long term OS substitute solution? No way.
What if Microsoft were to decide to not sell its Windows product to lets say Gateway with the intention of buying up its assets at a cheap price in order to ease into the hardware business with a lower overhead? Could Microsoft threaten other box makers away from bidding on Gateway's assets in order to improve their purchasing power at auction?
This is all, of course, hypothetical. This sort of thing, or anything like it, never goes on among honorable men. Lets all go back to sleep and continue dreaming of our perfect self-regulating world.
HR
PS:This scenario is something that Microsoft is not likely to do because it is too obvious. There are plenty of other more subtile but profitable monopolies that Microsoft may be permitted to take without competing for them using their operating system monopoly. I'm thinking something in the internet banking and commercial transactions arenas. (Imagine a technical innovation in Windows that was so difficult or expensive to license, that only the Gatesway Bank Group of Seattle was available for internet banking to all but the most technically skillful computer user.)
The answer to what to do with Microsoft is not to break it up or to hold it back technologically. What to do with Microsoft is to watch it very, very, closely. Like Caesar's wife, it must remain above reproach at all times and in all ways. |
