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To: Ken98 who wrote (74123)	11/8/1999 12:49:00 AM
From: BGR	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 86076

Ken, I must confess that my use of the phrase Baby Bills is not original, it was the great Goutama himself that presented it. I doubt if he is "all lathered up", as you put it. Anyway. The MSFT breakup is not in any way a zero sum game. By this, I mean that if MSFT is hurt, several other s/w companies together gain a lot more than what MSFT loses. If MSFT is not hurt, status quo remains. This virtually guarantees that at worst the MSFT breakup will have no negative effect on the broader market and at best (if MSFT is really, really hurt) the market will go up riding the coattails of those companies poised to gain from the vacuum created. Trust me, I am not a MSFT apologist. I am a die hard UNIX veteran and have always used some other platform when doing personal work - though market forces require that I master the quirks of Windows for professional development. I didn't join MSFT after graduation, which resulted in a significant (though not catastrophic, thank God! :-)) a financial loss on my part. I do not own MSFT equity directly (I do have index funds) either. My point, simply, is this: whatever happens to MSFT, this is good for the overall s/w market, and hence the US economy. This is not going to be the trigger that will bring this market down, if a quarter of WS technology analysts actually understand a quarter of what they claim to understand about the dynamics of the present day technology sector. What will possibly happen is huge redistribution of capital, but nothing more. Windows IMHO would have become an obsolete product over the new decade anyway as Internet based computing becomes the norm. SUNW has started giving away StarOffice for free, which is an excellent MSOffice equivalent. What else is there, anyway? Explorer and MSN.COM? AOL is the clear winner there, IMHO. So, this has little downside but lot of upside as innovation need not be unjustifiably afraid any longer. Regards, -BGR.