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

To: Bill Fischofer who wrote (63211)	11/21/2001 2:08:08 PM
From: Charles Tutt	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74651

It's not a question of fooling people. Microsoft was initially handed the monopoly by IBM, at least partly as a result of IBM's own monopoly problems with the DOJ. They then maintained it by a long string of dirty tricks, taking advantage of customers' needs for compatibility by deliberately breaking compatibility with competitors' software. Eventually, they were able to use their strength to force sole-source preloads on all the major manufacturers, further consolidating their power. Lately they're even bolder, transparently "cutting off the air supply" of competitors by including free alternatives to third party software with the preloaded OS; that way they can maintain the price of the OS even as the price of every other PC component plummets. At least that's how I see it. Charles Tutt (TM)

To: Bill Fischofer who wrote (63211)	11/21/2001 2:41:35 PM
From: dybdahl	Respond to of 74651

Not quite. Microsoft has always focused on short-term improvements in the OS, thinking that long-term issues probably isn't worth spending money on. There are some exceptions to this, like inventing Windows NT etc. I believe the reasons were quite simple: Do what you do best - don't try to win by doing what the competition does better. Microsoft has been saved by having a bigger market for low-price software, increasing the software variety and that the competition often has been very expensive. The problem for Microsoft right now is, that some neglected issues, like network security, is hitting back now. Microsoft still mainly treats security as PR. The competition has also become a lot cheaper, and the variety of software accessible by the average user is also rising fast for the competition, in a way that makes the average Linux user have more software than the average Windows user in the future. I totally agree, that XP will sell. Lars.