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

To: Alan Buckley who wrote (4863)	1/30/1998 2:18:00 PM
From: Jim Lamb	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74651

techweb.com

To: Alan Buckley who wrote (4863)	1/30/1998 2:56:00 PM
From: Paul Fiondella	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 74651

Can you point to any software companies that have moved beyond a narrow software niche that have not been either put out of business or bought up by MSFT? Intuit survived only because its acquisition by MSFT was blocked and it is sticking to its niche. Symantec's PC Tools look and feel product disappeared with the improved look and feel of Win95. Adobe is in a niche. Borland is practically out of business --- something that happened the minute it chose to broaden its product offerings beyond a niche. Same thing with Corel. All of those modem based communication products disappeared with winsock. The peer to peer networking companies got crushed with Win95. Care to mention any companies that have moved forward in the software business in MSFT territory. (Oh yes I forgot that PC Audio product that Allen bought into. Yes there's room for them.) I stand by the statement that MSFT is creating the seeds of its own downfall by creating no incentives for INNOVATION with regard to their monopoly. In particular as they extend their monopoly to the webtop they will create the same situation as they did with 16 bit OS's running on 32 bit processors. I can't point to a single thing MSFT innovated beyond the addition of sound to the PC OS. They have now created a situation where their declarations before the Appeals Court that they have the right to confuse OS with applications software spells out the word PROPRIETARY OS. Do you remember the days when buying a computer meant buying the software and the apps from the computer manufacturer?