To: Reginald Middleton who wrote (14225 ) 11/23/1997 2:10:00 PM From: Keith Hankin Read Replies (1) | Respond to
NSCP has no monopoly in the email sub industry. You know as well as I that this is dominated by other heavy weights, including MSFT. Besides, history has told us that just because a company holds a dominant marketshare in almost any specific application area does not mean that they are a monopoly. This just leaves them vulnerable to MSFT attacks. Any market that shows huge potential will be subject to MSFT as a competitor, thus pushing the "monopoly" out as the dominant player. I think that MSFT's rapid marketshare gains over NSCP is testimony to this. Now don't go and tell me that they gained on NSCP because of superior technology. That has nothing to do with it. Significant gains were being made while they still had an inferior product or just a comparable product (2.0/3.0). It was simply enough for MSFT to signal that they wanted to own this market using FUD, Contracts, bundling, leveraging Windows, etc. in ways that NSCP could not do. This is why NSCP had to give it away for free. They knew what was coming, and it was simply a matter of survival. I don't think NSCP was thinking about the competition as anyone but MSFT. It may surprise you that I am happy that MSFT did come up with a competiting browser. This just creates more competition and thus better products for customers. But I believe that it is finally time that MSFT had some real competition, including the possibility of a competing platform (Java). I do not want one dominant vendor anymore. It's just that MSFT can leverage their monopoly to dominate whereas NSCP is not really in this situation right now. If this were to change (not likely anytime soon), my mind would too. Actually, I take that back -- now that I will become a NSCP employee (mid December), in the name of self-interest, I want NSCP to supplant MSFT:) But the
