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

To: dybdahl who wrote (59987)	7/18/2001 12:09:16 PM
From: Rusty Johnson	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 74651

The Monopoly Has Just Begun Insidiously, incrementally, Microsoft is getting more and more of me. That has me worried. FORTUNE Monday, July 23, 2001 By Stewart Alsop fortune.com The book could only be read with Microsoft Reader, software for viewing e-books. I decided to buy the e-book, but Microsoft forced me to register with its Passport service to activate Reader. The ostensible reason is that Microsoft keeps track of the digital rights to each copy of the book. This is fine, except that in order to read the book, I had to divulge a bunch of personal information to Microsoft. And Passport is designed by Microsoft as a single central database that serves up your personal data whenever you use a browser to buy something from an online vendor. ... Insidiously, incrementally, Microsoft is getting more and more of me. And over time, Microsoft is going to collect more and more information about what I buy and what I do. I don't really have a choice. It is very nearly impossible to use any computer without using Microsoft's software, and increasingly that means that it is very nearly impossible to avoid handing over your personal information to the company. And this situation is just going to get worse, because Microsoft does have a monopoly, and it is using that monopoly to aggressively expand its dominance of computers--personal computers, office servers, handheld computers, even set-top boxes--and its dominance of the Web and Web services delivered through its Internet Explorer browser.