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Technology Stocks : MSFT Internet Explorer vs. NSCP Navigator -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: nommedeguerre who wrote (18726)	4/24/1998 12:46:00 AM
From: Eugene Goodman	Respond to of 24154

The breakup of Standard Oil and ATT This is the history as I remember it: Before mid 1800's the fuel of choice was defacated whale oil with a cost of maybe 50 to $ 100/ bbl. Commercial wells were drilled in and around Penn. in the 1860 and the price of oil [mostly for lighting] dropped. SOC was formed and by controlling transportation bought nearly all fo the small oil companies in Ohio, WV and Penn and the price of oil dropped. Oil was found on the Gulf Coast near Port Arthur a d the price of oil dropped. At this point SOC was too big. It was a rival of the government and had to be cut down to size. Welcome anti-trust. Good thing, too because new markets were developed for oil. Cars, trucks, heating, power generation so demand for oil increased so that it eventually balanced out the supply. I believe that the key factor in the breakup of SOC was power. ATT is more recent and more simple. ATT and the RBOC were all joined at the hip with interlocking cross subsidies. The cost of long distance calls were high to provide very high payments to the RBOC's The RBOC were natural monopolies and because of this were regulated by the states. The subsidies were justified by the cost to the RBOC's of universal access. MCI filed suit which resulted in the breakup. And look at what happened. The unregulated part, long distance, I believe has: lower prices, better technology, better service, much higher call volume,higher profits to the companies. The regulated RBOC from my perspective, well the service is dismal and getting worse, the cost is higher and the RBOC have made little or no contribution to better technology. The RBOC spend all of their energies fighting to keep out competition. I do not think that you can predict the consequences of splitting up MSFT. I can get shareware OS and applications but I don't. Gene