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

To: sandeep who wrote (62683)	11/7/2001 12:06:30 PM
From: Dave	Respond to of 74651

Re Microsoft's cannibalization problem Yes, Sandeep, the biggest competitors to Microsoft's new products are certainly its old products. Competition does not flourish when one company controls all of the major competitors. And many of the incompatibilities that Microsoft introduces in its new products to coerce customers to upgrade to new versions would probably be considered anticompetitive if both products weren't controlled by the same company. The idea that "this implies that other competitors don't need to be protected by the antitrust laws in such industries" is a nice try, but the reality is just the opposite. Because Microsoft can manipulate the cost, availability, and compatibility of the major competitors, their power as a monopolist is increased, not decreased, by the cannibalization issue. Dave