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To: David M Gambs who wrote (47405)	2/7/1998 8:47:00 PM
From: Barry Grossman	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 186894

David, << MSFT appears to want to control everything software>> I believe that what they say they want to do is bring increased value to the vested interests that are important to them - that is the huge number of present and future Windows users. Charlie Rose interviewed Nathan Mhyrvold last night on his PBS late night show and this is as close a paraphrase of Mhyrvold's reply to Rose's inflammatory characterization by Rose as I can remember today. It's quite close. "Appearing to want to control everything" is your perception - not mine. I'm all in favor of their making their software ever more useful. I don't consider this "controling everything." Mhyrvold was asked by Rose if he thought that the DOJ would allow them to add voice recognition capability to their operating system when it was "ready". Mhyrvold said that considering that there are now several companies out there offering such independent programs and considering the DOJ's present tack, he wasn't sure that they would be able to do this even though the utility of doing so would be huge for the great number of Windows users. He admitted that it might not be a good thing for the other companies selling these products today. As I said before, the issue of whether Microsoft will be allowed to continue to innovate it's products is absolutely crucial to the future of the software and computer industry. Barry

To: David M Gambs who wrote (47405)	2/7/1998 8:48:00 PM
From: Reginald Middleton	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 186894

<I believe it is business practices and was not touted as an anti-trust action.> You have based your allegations upon false assumptions, if I may be so presumptuous. MSFT controls about 5% of international software revenues, INTC controls a much larger portion. MSFT's current beef has to do with a breach of contract dispute, and not anti-trust issues, which is one of the main reasons they were able to get the special master dismissed until further notice. Although the DOJ should have pursued an anti-trust/Sherman Act route, they didn't for they could not prove (and probably will not be able to prove) any harm to the consumer, a litmus paper test for the precedence set for the Sherman Act. MSFT's DHTML (HTML 4.0) extensions have nearly been accepted and endorsed as a whole by the W3C (the consortium which oversees HTML standards). NSCP's has many proprietary implemntations that not only have not been endorsed by the W3C, but are less robust than MSFT's, ex. the layers tag, and their database tags. MSFT's databinding and Document Object Model is currently the most powerful, flexible, and easy to use, not to mention standard compliant. <However, MSFT seems to be constantly under the DOJ gun whereas INTeLr is not. This, I believe, is due to the way that the two companies conduct business. MSFT appears to want to control everything software whereas INTeLr only wants to control their own business.> The DOJ is more aggressive with MSFT becuase MSFT's competitors are much more powerful and aggressive than INTC's. They are the ones that have instigated the DOJ actions. Compare the banking industry and lobby, IBM, ORCL, SUNW, NSCP and NOVL (nearly all of these companies have majority market share in their respective businesses) to AMD and CYRIX. - INTC and MSFT have both dominated the desktop PC and now are aggressively moving into the enterprise. - Both companies aggresively and swiftly beat down competition when it attemptes to rear its head. - Both companies use their enormous economies of scale and the rule of increasing returns to aggressively price new technology at a point that is nearly impossible for the competition to match. - Both companies are diversifying heavily into WAN and new media. Both companies are investing heavily in new technology, R&D and acquisistions (primarily Internet, networking, media and graphics related). Assuming the aforementioned is valid, exactly how are the two companies' business practics different? RCM rcmfinancial.com