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

To: rudedog who wrote (46711)	6/14/2000 9:45:00 PM
From: cheryl williamson	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 74651

rudedog, No one will continue to buy a car that malfunctions, cheap or expensive. Windows established supremecy via M$FT's monopoly, not by any other means. Consumers don't know about O/S's anymore than they know about internal combustion engines, and they shouldn't have to know anything about them. They only bought MS-DOS because they didn't have a choice (in the very beginning), then they bought it to get at the apps (and there were no other choices except a truly pitiful OS/2 --Unix is not included here because it wasn't marketed as an O/S for PCs at that point), and finally consumers bought MS-DOS/Windows because M$FT threatened all the major resales channels if they didn't. Consumers buy apps not O/S's & M$FT made certain that competing apps didn't work on THEIR O/S as well as THEIR apps. In my mind, the M$FT monopoly from the beginning became abusive to consumers when Gates & Ballmer realized that their apps only had to be "good enough" and "better than the competition" in order to sell in the millions. They had no incentive toward excellence, so they did what came naturally, opted for mediocrity. Mediocrity has its benefits, rudedog. It easier, simpler, and cheaper to execute than excellence. It enhances corporate profitability with little or no risk of reprisal. The problem is: consumers deserve better. BTW: bugs come in different shapes & sizes. Consumers don't "choose" to re-boot their PC's. They do it out of necessity. Maybe the payoff is that they still get to use a Word Processor instead of an IBM selectric, but that doesn't mean that they haven't been harmed. As I've said before, the consumer deserves the best product for the lowest price, not a product that is just "good enough". That describes the Yugo perfectly. cheers, cherylw

To: rudedog who wrote (46711)	6/15/2000 8:51:00 AM
From: Insitu	Respond to of 74651

rudedog--I agree with you up to a point. MSFT won its monopoly position fair and square. (They did rip of the Mac GUI, but Apple ripped off Xerox Parc, so I guess that's okay. And Apple settled with Softie anyway, so let's forget that part). The part I object to was the adding other stuff to the OS after they were a monopoly. That's where they broke the law. Not by achieving a monopoly in the market. Not by keeping it. But by adding other applications and features and thereby driving competitors who make product that compete out of the market. That's illegal. Apple could have done it, but MSFT couldn't.