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Strategies & Market Trends : Gorilla and King Portfolio Candidates -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Teflon who wrote (3092)	6/24/1999 6:55:00 PM
From: J_W	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 54805

Teflon, I see you getting over the Knicks thing... I spent 3 years in NYC while in the USCG back in the early 70's. Got the chance to see a few games at MSG. MSFT/DOJ - I totally agree with you on this issue, and not because I happen to live in the NW. I know this will not go over well with the anything but MSFT crowd, but the critics would be much farther ahead putting all this wasted energy into their products instead of crying to the DOJ that they cannot compete with MSFT. I have never worked for MSFT, but they have made it possible for me to have a livelihood. I wonder how many businesses would not exist today if it were not for MSFT? The number has to be astronomical. Remember IBM treated the PC as if it were a toy, never to be useful for anything important. Would the PC industry had grown into what it is today if IBM not screwed up and let MSFT have the operating system and INTC the processor? I seriously doubt IBM would have let the PC industry grow as MSFT and INTC have done. MSFT is not perfect by any means, but they have kept on innovating and improving their products. The point of the matter is that the anti-trust laws were passed to protect consumers - not competitors. I have yet to see any evidence that the consumer has been damaged. Software used to cost much more in the 70's and 80's than it does now. And it didn't do but a fraction of what today's software can do. Anyone care to go back and use DOS based software? How about those text based screens? They were great weren't they. <gg> Where will software developers be if they have to design products for use with a multitude of operating systems? It is already tough enough with multiple versions of Windows and Macs now. You think supporting applications will get any easier? What operating system are you running? Oh - Well it works fine under XYZ OS so you need to switch or call your OS support for a solution. Consumers will love it! <gg> If AOL/Netscape or anyone else does not want to use Windows, they are perfectly free to spend their own money developing their own operating system or whatever. Let the marketplace decide what they want to use. The last thing we need is the government telling MSFT how to design theirs. Regardless of the outcome at this level, this case will be on appeal for the next decade. I just fail to see what benefit the consumer will ever get from this case. Probably something similar to the breakup of AT&T. That resulted in the immediate increase in telco costs to business, which were in turn passed on to the consumer. It is only now, when technology has finally made cheap communications possible that the costs have come down. In between we all paid for the breakup big time. If the DOJ gets its way, history will repeat itself. Regards, Jim