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

To: John F. Dowd who wrote (7522)	5/18/1998 7:00:00 PM
From: cheryl williamson	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 74651

All You MSFT HighFliers: Read what an NT consultant has to say about the UNIX vs. NT battle: kirch.net

To: John F. Dowd who wrote (7522)	5/18/1998 7:34:00 PM
From: cheryl williamson	Read Replies (5) \| Respond to of 74651

Well John, If I tell a friend I'm going to cut off your air supply, it's an idle threat. But if I try to choke you to death with my bare hands, it becomes attempted murder. See the difference? I could go back & tell everyone that I tried to choke John Dowd to death & he's such a whiner & complainer, he went right to the police... but it would still be attempted murder, nonetheless. What separates us from being a banana republic is the rule of law & its enforcement. Without anti-trust laws there would be no PC industry & no MSFT to begin with. The DOJ is just doing its job, & complaints have come from more than just NSCP. If you have a problem with some of the provisions in the Sherman & Clayton anti-trust statutes, we have rules in this country for changing them. cheers, cherylw

To: John F. Dowd who wrote (7522)	5/18/1998 10:41:00 PM
From: Hal Rubel	Respond to of 74651

Microsoft Abuse of Monopoly Position RE: "You still don't address the question of why not put all the browsers on the Windows 98 CD." IMHO, the question is, under the circumstances, does a firm with a (96%) monopoly in one product type area have the Right to bypass the free market mechanism to create multiple monopolies for itself in others. The real questions are matters of public policy and legal president, not rhetoric. However, a good analogy sometimes makes things clear, if you buy into the analogy. Lets use Bill Gates' analogy. If the Microsoft situation boils down to something like Pepsi coming to own 96% of all the supermarkets and then banning Coke from shelf space availability to the public, then there is a public problem. Further more, if to affirm monopolistic rights on the soda issue would also lead to parallel monopolies in in-house brands of paper towels, pickles, and produce, then all the worse. The obvious solutions to the Bill Gates super market analogy are to require the supermarket chain to at least carry the product(s) it has excluded in favor of its own, or failing that, to break up the super market chain to foster competition and product availability. (It has proved much cleaner and simpler to do the latter as in the cases of Standard Oil or AT&T.) In fact, I believe there are some real world landmark decisions involving supermarket in-house brand competition that may ultimately be used against Microsoft. Perhaps the choice of the supermarket Pepsi-Coke analogy was an unfortunate verbal blunder for Bill Gates to use. In any event ... It would not make any sense to ask this monopoly supermarket chain to carry all brands of any product, especially soda. However, if the public would naturally choose the unfairly excluded brand as a first or second choice, then I see no reason why it should not be on the shelves for the public to choose if it wants. Publicly tolerated monopolies have always been awkward beasts. Like pet beasts, society has usually been smart enough to enjoy their use of them without letting them roam free to feed in the streets. Being a monopoly has definite advantages for Microsoft, but it also has certain disadvantages and special responsibilities too. Cheer up. Microsoft still has it made in the shade no mater what the outcome. It is just a mater of adjusting to a unique level of success. HR I use a "96%" market share because of all PCs available, computer giant Apple has a 3.8% market share. If we stick to just Intel platforms, Microsoft's market share must begin to approach 100% of all the PCs in the known universe.