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

To: Yaacov who wrote (45558)	5/28/2000 11:09:00 AM
From: Dan3	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 74651

Re: Jackson seemed a little biased to me, but no one was without sin, and the MSFT defense was terrible IMO... The judge felt (correctly or incorrectly) that Microsoft had violated - egregiously - the consent decree. In the judges mind, this shows contempt for judges and the judicial system. Everything Microsoft did at the trial reinforced that conclusion. I don't think he was against the Microsoft the software company, he was against Microsoft the contemptuous defendant. Windows totally dominates the operating system space, with the possible exceptions of web servers (which are basically embedded devices at this point) and very large systems, which are more a story of services and salesmanship than systems. Office dominates the productivity application space, VB and VBA are being adopted by other companies as scripting and development languages due to their dominance. Microsofts big push now is into the computer as appliance market with Windows CE. Windows CE would be part of the OS group and be unaffected by a breakup. All three of these are natural monopolies, with increasing economies of scale and high barriers to entry. If Microsoft is broken up into two companies, it will make no difference at all to its profitability or growth rate with the possible exception that, with the litigation over, growth and profits will increase. Unless Microsoft is regulated as the monopoly that it is (and that option isn't even being discussed anymore) it will continue to hold a license to print increasingly large piles of money. You may be right about the "poor defense" being no accident. By pushing the judge to the breakup option instead of behavior restrictions, Microsoft may have been using a "don't throw me in that brier patch" defense - and it seems to have worked. Regards, Dan