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

To: John F. Dowd who wrote (41213)	4/5/2000 6:54:00 AM
From: John F. Dowd	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 74651

Good thinking from WSJ this AM: Nobody should underestimate the campaign of vilification and political > gamesmanship by Microsoft's competitors that helped bring us to this > week's finding that Microsoft had committed "illegal" business acts. Bill > Gates rates up there with the most admired Americans in polls; the public > is sophisticated enough to know that antitrust "wrongs" are fussy > technicalities, not moral failings. Maybe some of his opponents are having > second thoughts after getting bounced around in the week's Nasdaq turmoil, > clearly a reaction in part to the Microsoft verdict. > > That said, the tedious processes of the law guaranteed that even before > the case record was closed, this week's decision would be based on how the > world looked to Netscape, oh, around mid-1995. We trust we won't be > hurting Judge Jackson's feelings when we say the disjunction between legal > time and Internet time makes his decision myopic and anachronistic in the > extreme. > > The judge embraces an argument about Microsoft quashing an emergent > Netscape "platform" for "applications" that might have competed with > Microsoft's platform/applications. He leaves the impression we've sunk > into the dark ages because we don't have a Netscape word processor. > > In fact there is a huge new platform for non-Microsoft applications. It's > called the Web. By picking up the gantlet that Netscape threw down, > Microsoft drove forward the browser technology and ubiquity that make > possible the amazing things we see today. There's no way we'd be this far > along if Microsoft had left development of the browser to Netscape. We'd > say markets have worked fine, unless you have a reason to wish that > billions of dollars had ended up in the pockets of Jim Clark and James > Barksdale instead of those of Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer. > > Judge Jackson misses the forest, meadows, glades and glens by focusing on > a patch of lawn. Everything he accuses Microsoft of using its "monopoly" > power to stop from happening is happening, on a much larger scale, in the > vast world that has popped into existence since this suit was first > agitated. Instead of creating another dinky operating system or word > processor, we're now in the business of creating (non-Microsoft) > applications like "global auto industry" or "global access to the stock > market" or "global access to books." JFD

To: John F. Dowd who wrote (41213)	4/5/2000 5:58:00 PM
From: Hal Rubel	Read Replies (5) \| Respond to of 74651

RE: "CT: Actually the MSFT attorneys did present evidence that NSCP distributed 160 million copies of Communicator after they had been "stopped" from doing so by MSFT "predatory practices". The judge ignored these facts preferring to dwell on what might have been, what might happen in the future, and other inane speculations. JFD" No mere mortal consumer could possibly install Netscape in a Windows machine, from what it looked like in the court room. Besides, how much was Netscape able to make off any of these 160 million copies? I'm thinking they were free. And I'm wondering if any were sucessfully installed on Wintel clones. Hal