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

To: moat who wrote (32484)	11/7/1999 12:03:00 AM
From: Brian Malloy	Respond to of 74651

Ditto To: John F. Dowd </stocktalk/profile.aspx?userid=3365403> who wrote (6436 </stocktalk/readmsg.aspx?msgid=4306335>) From: Brian Malloy </stocktalk/profile.aspx?userid=873698> Bottom of Form 0 Top of Form 1 Monday, May 4 1998 8:00AM ET Reply # of 32270 Bottom of Form 1 I think Orin Hatch's actions had more to do with SUNW and NSCP than NOVELL. Barksdale and McNealy were sitting at the table in front of the Senator. From where I sit, ORACLE, NOVELL, APPLE over the last six months have basically stated in public that they became unfocused by fixating on beating MSFT rather than growing their own business. NSCP doesn't say it but they also went down the wrong path. NSCP could be where YAHOO is today but they got browser tunnel vision. I also find it interesting that IBM, SUNW, and ORACLE much more than MSFT proved to impede NSCP's progress and it bowed of its own free will. IBM to protect its Lotus Notes franchise, SUNW over Java control and ORACLE over its thin client concept told NSCP to cool it or risk losing their support. With friends like these, who needs enemies? Message 4363038

To: moat who wrote (32484)	11/7/1999 9:32:00 AM
From: Art Bechhoefer	Respond to of 74651

Moat, you make a number of interesting points, many of which I agree with. IBM, in particular, had completely misunderstood the import of the PC when it decided the main use would be to facilitate access to mainframes. That led to its decision to allow MSFT to retain proprietary rights to the new system it was developing - a gift (probably fortunate, otherwise, if IBM had owned it, it would have gone nowhere). As to Barksdale, the issue, I believe, isn't whether he selected the wrong business goals, but whether Microsoft took ANY actions which interfered with whatever business he chose to conduct. By interfere, I mean in the legal sense. The legal questions concerning that issue have not been addressed in the fact finding, but the evidence looks pretty damning, and of course, it was the issue originally responsible for the filing of the antitrust complaint. The Macintosh system, as originally developed in the early 1980's, made extensive use of a graphical user interface that was ill suited to the architecture of the Intel chips that were being produced at that time, and far more suited to the Motorola chip architecture. This fact could have produced immense profits for both Apple and Motorola, were it not for the extreme arrogance of Apple management in believing they had designed the perfect computer - a computer that could not be opened or modified without voiding the warranty, and for which Apple was not interested in licensing clones. That turned out to be the perfect formula for being left in the dust by an inferior IBM computer that could be modified to suit the user (like the Apple II), and that was open to other manufacturers. The ensuing competition in the PC market assured that PC prices would ALWAYS be lower than prices for a Macintosh with comparable performance. And competition is really at the heart of this case. As to Word Perfect, I have heard a different version, but one which I am unable to corroborate. The version I heard was that Word Perfect did not get key program code information for Microsoft Windows until AFTER the new version of Word was ready, or nearly ready for the market. Such behavior would be similar to that identified in the court's factfinding on similar issues dealt with in the case. Whether Lotus 123 missed the boat, I don't know. But I do know that Lotus Notes was quite a good piece of software for communicating over a network, and superior to the product delivered to the market at a later point by MSFT. Were there any shenanigans here? Finally, no one should consider MSFT free of sin. Does anyone recall the matter between STAC Electronics and Microsoft, concerning proprietary compression technology, which MSFT sought to appropriate (or expropriate)? MSFT lost that one fair and square. They might lose the instant case as well. It's more than just noise.