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

To: d[-_-]b who wrote (29137)	9/4/1999 2:17:00 PM
From: RTev	Respond to of 74651

Being a UNIX user, I can say I do appreciate StarOffice - now I read all those darn attachments without having to switch to the NT box to read another one paragraph Word doc. Good point. And that's exactly why is does pose a long-term threat to Microsoft since it makes other platforms more viable as a desktop alternative to Windows. I would love to see MSFT target Linux and Solaris for Sparc and x86 with a real MS Office. Just like they do for the Mac folks. I would too. I have little doubt that the MS Office folks would do that if it were up to them. But, of course, it isn't up to them. For now, my guess is that Office would be barred from supporting other platforms because doing so would be considered a threat to the Windows platform. MacOffice could be used as an example of why Office should extend support to various Unixes because it brings in a good revenue stream, but it's also a special case. Excel started out as a Mac program. Word, in its current form, owes more to the early Mac versions than to the first DOS versions. From the very beginning, Microsoft has owned the market on the Mac for the two primary components of Office, so their continued support for MacOS applications is status quo. That wouldn't be the case if they were to add support for Unix or Linux. Doing so would be interpreted as a major shift in Redmond. It would give extra impetus to the very slow adoption of alternative desktop systems. An example of that comes from an announcement made last month by a Gateway subsidiary. (Although the division has now lost its president and may never carry out their announced plans, it was still significant as an indication of what will surely happen elsewhere even if it doesn't happen at Gateway.) They said they were close to releasing specifications for an array of devices that would use Linux and Java as the foundation for a new net-centric platform. They said they had decided to use an optimized version of the Linux kernel as the base of the new devices because of the growing number of Linux applications available, especially StarOffice. Had they released these things, Linux would have been deeply hidden under the GUI. It's doubtful they would have offered the user either the level of control or the level of choice available now to Linux users, but in exchange, they would have offered a ready-to-run system. Microsoft Office would be a great fit on such a system, but its presence in that space would encourage the adoption of such non-Windows systems. And that's something that Gates and Ballmer want to prevent at all costs.