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

To: batskinner who wrote (5760)	4/12/1998 3:01:00 AM
From: rudedog	Respond to of 74651

MSFT stifles some kinds of competition but promotes others. There probably is more value than downside to having a stable set of APIs for developers, and a single large market for those developers to write for. That stability, and the many toolsets that exploit the environment, allow very sophisticated programs to be written with a minimum of base level code. As a guy who has developed systems from the metal up, I can say from experience that the effort and risk to create large systems using Intel architecture has gone from 20 man-years 10 years ago to maybe 3 man-months today. That is useful innovation and it resulted from both dramatic improvements in the quality and scale of MSFT products, and also from hundreds of other software companies riding that wave. The downside is that MSFT has to keep growing, and they do that by looking at every successful trend and then trying to either replicate it or buying the technology. In either case the end result is that major changes in the development of this technology happen more slowly and have less functionality, because the industry as a whole does not get to keep as much of the market, and therefore have less money to invest in technical development. This forces the real innovators to work well outside of the path of the mighty MSFT machine. I think we are seeing a change in the way MSFT works, driven not only by the visible opponents (Sun, Netscape, etc.) but also by a groundswell of people pushing back on the MSFT model. I suspect that MSFT will tend to stabilize their base business and allow more competition there, and turn their sights to other related business opportunities, both to keep the loyalty of people who have helped MSFT get where it is and also to get the DOJ off their back. But old habits are hard to break, and there will probably not be a major shift in MSFT practices until younger MSFT management gets in a position to influence policy. When that happens I think we will have a healthier and more robust software industry.

To: batskinner who wrote (5760)	4/13/1998 11:09:00 AM
From: Tom Kearney	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 74651

I do beleive MSFT needs to tone down some business practices, but.... Since fear and greed are are always well respresented in the investment community, I'm more concerned that people overlook MSFT's positives. It is not BillyGs fault that Ashton-Tate, WordPerfect, Lotus, and many others failed. MSFT 'gets the business'. MSFT's huge investment in R&D suggests to me that they are anything but reactionary. The recent PR flap shows that - yes, they can screw up big. But, NetScape, a fraction of MSFT's size, has one of the top 5 lobbying budgets of High Tech companies. Is government involvement more likely to kill the high tech golden goose (everybody incl MSFT) or help it grow? Look at their success in the war on poverty, if you want a track record. Regards, TK