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

To: Duane L. Olson who wrote (33572)	11/9/1999 10:16:00 PM
From: The Duke of URL©	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74651

Charles... out of curiosity.. How would you see the remedies best structured: A complete breakup, "Cloning" the OS and/or applications development? ... or some lesser version that would leave MSFT intact, while still assuring the rest of the industry that Microsoft will start competing fairly? Say, Duane..... why don't you guys go count your chickens some where else. All our incubator space has already been rented. This is not the end of the Beginning, nor is it the Beginning of the end. I think your going to find, that this is the Beginning of the Beginning. Stay tuned.

To: Duane L. Olson who wrote (33572)	11/10/1999 9:14:00 AM
From: Charles T. Russell	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74651

The need for remedy may be obviated by the length of the appeal process or a newly elected government in 2001. But if the break-up happened today I would expect to be along the IBU lines of OS, Application Products, Internet Products and Services etc., The real question is defining the gray areas of an OS component and an application component. This argument is similar to the IE debate that occurred during the trial. I would, as a shareholder and MS/OS user, be very comfortable with the OS unit being split away from the parent company. But what has justice achieved here? All that they have done is excise the monopoly from the parent corporation. In affect, they would have just created a smaller (Gross Revenue wise) monopoly. So I would expect that this new unit would be forced to do business in a completely different way. This is an extremely complex issue. In the history of the United States, I can't recall the government ever breaking up a firm whose major products were intangible assets. Most trust busting was done along the lines of physical plants or broken up based upon regions. The only way to truly break up a knowledge based / knowledge driven company is to divide the true factors of production: the employees who perform the R&D and create the innovations. You need King Solomon for this, not Joel Klein.

To: Duane L. Olson who wrote (33572)	11/10/1999 9:39:00 AM
From: John F. Dowd	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74651

Duane: The operate phrase in Charles post was let MSFT split is O/S division off. Let market forces tell MSFT that this is the proper choice not some judge and the DOJ who don't know a bit from a byte. And lest you get too far afield in your speculation here is what the NYTimes says the government hacks are pondering as alternatives: One would be to force Microsoft to publish the secret, proprietary source code that makes up the Windows operating system. Another would be to force the company to auction the Windows source code so that two or three other companies could sell competing systems, the Times said.. A third would split it into several parts, each holding all the software code and intellectual property from Microsoft products, but in competition. The final alternative is breaking it up into three companies, one controlling the operating system, one its applications programmes like Word and Excel, and the third with the Internet and related businesses, the Times said.