Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

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

To: Reginald Middleton who wrote (19247)	5/18/1998 9:35:00 AM
From: Daniel Schuh	Respond to of 24154

Right, Reggie. If you read the hometown rag instead of relying purely on Microsoft PR and Microspun stories, you might get a little perspective. Oh, I forget, they're just selling advertising. The Mind of Reg(TM) knows all. As for the Nav distribution proposal, there's another angle, from my favorite concise ref, infoworld.com Popular Idea No. 4: Netscape gives away its browser too, so why shouldn't Microsoft? Because of its desktop OS monopoly, Microsoft gets to bundle Internet Explorer into PCs as they ship. Netscape's customers have to download it. A free market doesn't ask consumers to make purchase decisions based on the greater good, only their own. And even free, Netscape costs more than Internet Explorer. The parallel with the newspaper's we-print situation is exact: In both cases a monopoly in distribution confers an unfair advantage and requires the company with the monopoly to sell its product at a profit. I wouldn't argue the legal technicalities of this, but nobody will deny the importance of the OEM bundling channel and Microsoft's ironclad grip on it. Except in the legal context, of course, another one of those small mind things. And I hope nobody here gets the idea that you know anything about the law beyond the Microsoftese version. Which is, of course, somewhat at variance with the high school civics version, but that takes us from my small mind problem to my Shirley Temple problem. Cheers, Dan.

To: Reginald Middleton who wrote (19247)	5/18/1998 12:01:00 PM
From: Keith Hankin	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 24154

I do criticize MSFT when I feel they deserve it, but I rarely get the oppurtunity with all of the MSFT bashing going on around here. Do you actually feel that the govt. is not perverting Anti-trust law by coercing one company to distribute another company's product under the auspices of helping the consumer. Both products are already freely available. I agree that asking MSFT to bundle Navigator is too much. But this is just one alternative, among many, that the DOJ is providing. I'm pretty sure that this is not a sticking point in the failure to reach an agreement. It's just a point that MSFT (and you) likes to bring out and parade around to show how "unjust" the whole DOJ case is. I believe that the DOJ should never have even suggested this, since they never would have agreed to it, and it just gives ammunition to MSFT in their propoganda war. How would you have responded to me if they did not ask for this concession?