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

To: pagejack who wrote (35101)	12/6/1999 7:09:00 PM
From: The Duke of URL©	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 74651

PJ: You all on the thread are going to love this: I just spent 5 seconds looking at the Headings of the Government's suggested Conclusions of Law. First, the existence of an Illegal Monopoly requires both the existence of a "monopoly" coupled with harm to the consumer. This is a "mixed question of law and fact" which in English means that the Judge must find as a matter of fact that the consumer was harmed. Okay, okay NOW comes the funny part: At the time MSFT was battling netscape it was NETSCAPE that had the monopoly in the browser market. This is an indisputable fact. So the Government's argument had to be at rial, that MSFT tied MSIE to the Windows operating system. The problem with this is that the Goverment spent HALF the trial PROVING the MS browser was separate from the operating system. In English you could download win 98 with msie tied to it and still use Netscape. You could even use msie to download netscape AND STILL CAN. If MSFT then raised the price of the browser, then there might arguably have damage to the consumer. But now, you get it free with windows. And since the Government has "proved" they are separate, at least so far as the ability to use the one operating system with the other browser and they don't have to be tied, you have one competitor (msft) trying to beat another competitor who DID have a monopoly in the browser market based on price and one competitor (SUNW) trying to destroy the other competitor's turf by rendering the operating system unnecessary. What was/is the result of this war? Maybe harm to a competitor, but not to the consumer. and That's thirty for this evening folks. Duke