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Technology Stocks : How high will Microsoft fly? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: John F. Dowd who wrote (27310)	7/25/1999 3:42:00 PM
From: t2	Respond to of 74651

JFD This exclusive attitude by AOL regarding AIM is not going to hurt MSFT in the eyes of the courts either. I can't expect MSFT can really expect that the investing public is going to buy their poor mouthing with all that they have on their plate. I was thinking the same thing. AOL has been lobbying for the open cable access. Now the cable ISPs have a weapon to work with. Cable operators must be happy with this turn of events. Now we have this gorilla among ISPs behaving in an "uncompetive" manner---ie trying to monopolize. AOL is also creating friction with other ISPs(and portals like Yahoo)---who would focus some of their lobbying efforts against AOL and not just cable cos. In addition, the more one hears of the competitive challenges to MSFT, the more likely Judge Jackson might rule in favor of MSFT. Logically, a monopoly exists if it can be maintained without government intervention. So far there has been no government intervention simply because a ruling has not been made. MSFT is facing competition from all sides. The strange thing is that even if MSFT wins, the DOJ would have accomplished their primary objective anyways. Now companies don't fear MSFT---just look at AOL and RealNetworks.