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Strategies & Market Trends : Gorilla and King Portfolio Candidates -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: the dodger who wrote (23915)	4/30/2000 12:39:00 PM
From: saukriver	Respond to of 54805

MSFT: Contained Gorilla I have made a few posts on the private litigation facing Microsoft as a result of its inability to settle and the fact that--unless Judge Jackson withdraws the findings of as as part of a settlement deal--Microsoft will not be able to re-litigate the findings of facts (which turbocharge the private plaintiffs' civil litigation). Those posts--briefly summarized--posit that even if MSFT "wins" its appeal (e.g., by trimming back the judgment from breakup to a short list of admonitions), it is condemned to litigation over the findings of fact. (There remains a remote possibility for Microsoft is that the entire trial is set aside by the appellate court for procedural reasons, such as Judge Jackson's limitation to 12 witnesses.) And I have called into question Microsoft Legal's ability to handle the myriad of (turbocharged) suits it now faces. But I do not think private litigation is the biggest challenge facing Microsoft. In my mind, it is the brain drain. It is serious from what I can see and likely to get much, much worse. It used to be that Microsoft had the very smartest and driven people working for it. When I was young, people used to say that very smart people worked for IBM, too. Now, I know IBM no longer recruits the very brightest, and I think the same is rapidly becoming true for Microsoft. I believe that Microsoft's software engineers are still somewhat excited and intrigued by what they do day-to-day. Granted; they of course have access to the Windows source code that is unavailable to most others. But on the business side I think Microsoft has lost many key maniacs that drove the company to great heights. Clearly, the smartest people at Microsoft have already headed for the exit. I am left with the distinct impression that it is no longer cool or cutting edge to work for Microsoft. MSFT has become like IBM in the sense that the spirit of adventure is almost all gone now. saukriver