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

To: Jim McMannis who wrote (40244)	4/1/2000 6:34:00 PM
From: Charles Tutt	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74651

Mediation fails: dailynews.yahoo.com I guess today being April 1, I'd look for confirmation, but Yahoo! is generally pretty reliable. JMHO.

To: Jim McMannis who wrote (40244)	4/1/2000 7:40:00 PM
From: RocketMan	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 74651

While I agree with your sentiment, I'm afraid the collapse of the settlement talks means that msft will be entangled in individual law suits for years, and will lose its competitive edge. Principles are fine in patriotic endeavors, but they can lose a lot of money in the marketplace. I wish msft would have offered up something that was palatable to doj, even if they did not think it right. Like splitting the company, which would have made huge gains for everyone, including msft. After all, it is a heck of a lot easier to grow as two or three 100+ B companies than to grow the largest (now 2nd largest) company, a half-trillion dollar one. Oh well, closing out my calls Monday.

To: Jim McMannis who wrote (40244)	4/2/2000 5:48:00 PM
From: William C. Spaulding	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 74651

I don't understand...Microsoft gives away the IE5 browser and they are somehow gouging the public. If they are forced to separate the browser and sell it at "regulated" prices how does this help the consumer who was getting it free in the first place? All this would do is subsidise Netscape at the expense of the consumer. I didn't say this. Read the article again (http://money.york.pa.us/Microsoft_Monopoly.htm). There's nothing wrong with giving away software, if it's ALWAYS going to be free. But look at MS Office. That was free at one time, but now that Microsoft's monopoly is established in the office suite, Microsoft charges quite a bit of money, because they're free to do so. They no longer have to worry about the competition. That's the hallmark of a monopoly. This is what predatory pricing is all about. I'm sure when people were getting MS Office for free, they thought this was a great deal. But Microsoft only did this so that, later on, they could charge a much higher rate than they could have with real competition. Look at the operating system. Microsoft said that IE will always be free. Of course, they're saying this because they want to avoid antitrust charges of predatory pricing. But for a while, Microsoft wanted to move everybody to Windows 2000. Windows 2000 is more expensive than Windows NT, and much more expensive than Windows 98. By moving everybody to Windows 2000, they are, in effect, raising the price of the operating system for everyone. Microsoft has abandoned this goal for now, but I'm sure it will return again at some point. So if Microsoft claims that IE is part of the operating system, and they raise the price of the operating system, then IE isn't really free. It only looks that way. And think about this: Because Microsoft is selling more and more copies of its software, it could easily drop its prices, and still increase profits, but it doesn't. Because it doesn't have to. It's a monopoly. It doesn't matter that software is getting more complex, because, as I said in my article, they're selling more copies, and each one of those copies is almost pure profit. In the case of licensing deals, it IS pure profit. This more than covers the extra cost in developing the software. If you don't think Microsoft is charging too much for its software, then where do you think Microsoft is getting all of its money? It's certainly not because of efficiency. Microsoft programmers code pretty much the same way every other programmer codes. And just look at the constant delays for just about every software product they announce. Windows 2000 is a good example, and yet, I read that there at least 63,000 reported bugs. Even Office 2000 is really buggy, even with the new Service Release Pack that they just released, almost a year after they released Office 2000. I certainly see no signs of efficiency at Microsoft. And certainly, I see little in the way of innovation. Microsoft has been incorporating other people's ideas into their software product for years, and will continue to do so. So, the bottom line is, Microsoft is getting its money from people who are paying exorbitant prices because Microsoft is a monopoly, so it can charge whatever price it wants.