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

To: Carlos Blanco who wrote (7770)	5/21/1998 1:40:00 PM
From: Bearded One	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 74651

Gee, Carlos, good to see you back. If you're going to attack my general premises, then please do it a little less randomly. What should be addressed is Mr. Bearded One's more general premise: that it is "bad" or "immoral" for Microsoft to exercise its property rights, even if such an exercise would cause a 3rd party like Compaq to (theoretically) become unprofitable in the future. It is completely good and moral for Microsoft to exercise its property rights. It is bad and immoral for Microsoft to exercise rights which it does not have. Under US law, it is illegal to tie two products together for the purpose of monopoly preservation and extension of a monopoly in one area to another. In this case, IE 4.0 and Windows 95 are being illegally tied. Once you eliminate your incorrect statement about property rights, then the rest of your argument falls flat. I won't requote it except for one last piece: Very interesting: the more successful you are in the marketplace, the less rights you have in terms of owning, licensing, and extending your product. Netscape certainly has the right to tie inclusion of its browser to Linux for distribution to Compaq, Dell, and Gateway. They have that right and you don't. Why? Because there is no monopoly. The more successful you are in the marketplace, the greater ability you have to leverage your product in innumerable ways. Antitrust laws simply moderate the amount and type of leveraging you are allowed to do. Tell me, would you rather trade positions with Netscape? What disgusts me the most is the defiant myopia some people at Microsoft have about Microsoft's power. It has much more control over the playing field than just about anyone else. Even if the DOJ wins every single one of its claims against Microsoft, they'll still have much more control over the playing field than just about anyone else. You will still have more capabilities in the marketplace than Netscape or Sun or Oracle or Caldera. So Microsoft should stop whining and behave like a responsible monopoly.