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

To: Ibexx who wrote (7442)	5/18/1998 7:04:00 PM
From: Dwight E. Karlsen	Respond to of 74651

I think MSFT should raise the price of Win98 right now. Those States are going to demand some $$ even if they can't prove anything -- they'll need to pay their expensive lawyers they've hired, and they'll claim that Bill Gates tricked them (state AGs) into suing them (msft).

To: Ibexx who wrote (7442)	5/21/1998 10:45:00 AM
From: Flair	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 74651

Ibexx & all, "Bill Gates' open letter to shareholders" To Our Customers, Partners and Shareholders: When Microsoft was formed 23 years ago, we made a commitment to innovation - to creating software that would bring the benefits of affordable, accessible computing into every home and office. Today, PCs are helping people be more productive at work, helping children learn and get access to the Internet at school, and helping families communicate with each other. This is an industry built on innovation, competition and consumer choice - principles that America's antitrust laws were designed to promote, and that have always been a cornerstone of Microsoft's business practices. Yet, as you have probably heard, on May 18th the Department of Justice and a number of state Attorneys General filed antitrust lawsuits against us in federal court. We believe that the allegations made in these lawsuits are without merit - and the litigation, if it were to succeed, would hurt consumers and high-tech companies everywhere, not to mention the U.S. economy. During the past two weeks, Microsoft engaged in serious discussions with federal and state officials in an effort to avoid a protracted lawsuit. But their key demands - that Microsoft incorporate Netscape's competing Web-browsing software in every copy of Windows, or that we license PC makers to emasculate Windows by hiding its entire user interface and removing access to its Internet technology - appear to benefit a single competitor at the expense of consumers. We do not believe that the government should be in the business of designing software products - particularly if its goal is to hide innovative new technology from consumers. We are working hard to make computers easier to use, not more difficult. Hiding cool new technology does not help consumers. PC makers are already free to install Web-browsing software from any company on their computers, and to display that software prominently. Windows users can already choose between Microsoft's Internet Explorer and any other Web browser - most of them free. Because we share extensive data about Windows with software developers - among them competitors such as Netscape and Sun Microsystems - consumers can choose from thousands of different software applications, confident that all will run on their PC. And with Windows 98, the applications they choose will run better than ever. I want you to know that Microsoft will vigorously defend the fundamental principle at stake in this litigation. The freedom to innovate, improve, and integrate new features into products has been the mainstay of our industry for more than two decades, and has helped turn it into one of the most vibrant and competitive industries the world has seen. Without it, today's PCs would lack integrated modem support, memory management, task switching and countless other features we all now take for granted. We plan to move ahead with the release of Windows 98 on schedule. It's a great new product that will benefit PC users both at work and at home. Microsoft remains passionately committed to providing the best solutions to your software needs by constantly improving Windows and supporting open Internet standards. Without the ability to create and improve new products, no high-tech company could survive - and consumers everywhere would be worse off. Sincerely, Bill Gates ÿ