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

To: freeus who wrote (7058)	5/13/1998 5:57:00 PM
From: Chung Lee	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 74651

What possibly could the states and DOJ do tomorrow? Injunction to Windows98? I thought that idea was already rejected by the Appeal Court last night, anyone please point out what the gov't lawyers are up to? Didn't Microsoft say Win98 will ship as scheduled?

To: freeus who wrote (7058)	5/13/1998 6:13:00 PM
From: Scotsman	Respond to of 74651

Well, as much as I agree with free markets, once again we are stuck with those anti trust laws that are on the books. And if a law is on the books, it should be enforced. Now I think the best thing to do would be to get rid of them, but there they are. As far as comparing MSFT to the tobacco companies, there are some really big differences. First, MSFT probably won't be paying a 300 billion dollar fine, in fact they probably won't pay any fine. They will probably just be broken up, or at least limited in what they can include in a operating system. So the beauracrats will not benifit from a huge cash extortion like the tobacco settlement guarentees. Second, there is no law that I know of that the tobacco companies have violated, other than having a legal product that has attracted those greedy, soul-less eyes of the invisible government. But MSFT may have actually violated law, so there could be legal precedent. Finally, about the destruction of the country, yes, I find this action distasteful as it is against my free market beliefs. But Standard oil accounted for 5% of the GDP when it was broken up, and the country survived and actually flourished. So I don't expect the Chi Coms to be charging over the hill tomorrow afternoon. In fact, I am not sure if MSFT will do anything stock price wise.

To: freeus who wrote (7058)	5/13/1998 6:33:00 PM
From: DavesM	Respond to of 74651

<Offtopic> MSFT almost broke its 50 day moving average today (did intraday). If the 50 day moving average is broken, usually Microsoft responds quite positively. <on topic>re:"if MSFT has to spend ridiculous amounts of money". -No problem, I'm sure that the Feds or the states would love to create a regulatory rate commission who would have the power to "deem a fair rate of return on OS sales" for MSFT, while "protecting" the consumer and competition. Shouldn't that reduce legal fees?...<Sorry, I just couldn't help myself!> BTW, I'm sure a direct consequence of IBM living in and out of Federal Court and fighting DOJ for 28 years, was that IBM created an open PC system; and went to outside vendors for CPU's and Operating Systems. At the time they certainly could have just purchased an OS (or modify an existing OS enough, so as not to infringe copywrite) and they certainly were in a position that they could have owned ALL of Intel (IBM was after all the largest shareholder).