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Technology Stocks : COMS & the Ghost of USRX w/ other STUFF -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Scrapps who wrote (10658)	12/14/1997 1:18:00 PM
From: jhild	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 22053

OK, Scrapps. You can draw me out on this one. I believe that MSFT has broken the law. I believe that the judge has ruled this as well. MSFT has tied sales of it's browser, and it's browser alone, to the sales of it's OS. As fact I would cite the CPQ stories with regard to MSFT threatening to pull their Win95 license if they shipped NN with their OEM computers. This is plainly unfair competition and I hope that I don't read from your remarks that you actually agree MSFT has any right to do this. With their monopoly position in OS, CPQ was coerced. Indeed at this time MSFT has mostly achieved their goal of establishing IE. Integrating it into Win98, or is it 99 by now, is going to cloud this issue further. We don't disagree I think that MSFT can integrate whatever they want into their operating system. We may depart at the point that I would contend that MSFT must leave the playing field level by allowing access to the same features that their own browser enjoys, to other applications and browser wannabes. Otherwise this once again becomes an unfair practice. The quotes that you provided in my mind only reflect the fact that MSFT has achieved it's objectives as far as getting distribution for it's browser. Their approach is a little akin to dumping to drive the competition out of business, but NSCP has employed a give it away free policy as well, so live by the sword, die by the sword. As to whether anyone now will change their delivery of browsers, the OEMs are probably in a position to open bidding now on how much the others are willing to pay them to have it put on their systems as opposed to vice versa. Once it's part of the OS, it will be a different situation. As to the statements of the PR people at Micron and Dell, what else are they going to say? "We're giving away a free browser, even though it's not the one everyone wants." They're shipping a browser that doesn't cost them any money - giving value for no cost. A good deal for them. Who can blame them? But I am at a loss to see what it proves, other than MSFT has succeded to a degree in establishing their browser as a credible, maybe even at the moment better, browser than NN, that is available for free. But things are a little different now. Because Dell could start asking MSFT for money to have it shipped if they want. Before they couldn't even ship the OS if they didn't.