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

To: dumbmoney who wrote (7926)	5/23/1998 11:30:00 PM
From: Dwight E. Karlsen	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74651

Microsoft has an absolute right under the law to make the best product they can. Absolutely, I agree. It seems to me that any freedom-loving American should also agree. Bill Gates didn't make any secret of the fact that Netscape was a competitor. In his Monday response, he said, "Let me be very clear on something: Netscape chose to position themselves and their product as a head-to-head competitor with Microsoft." He went on to say that Netscape and Sun et al made statements which indicated that their game plan was to develop Java to the extent that eventually it would render the Windows OS useless, making it fail in the marketplace. Now I personally think that this is all just your normal competitive positioning amongst competitors. People make wild speculative statements. But it does show that Microsoft had essentially been "put on notice". What was Microsoft supposed to do, roll over and die? Certainly they are higher quality people than that. They have spirit, and don't shrink from challenges. So yes of course, Microsoft got very competive wrt Netscape, but that's not illegal. And like you say, even if everything else is put aside, where the DOJ will lose is that MSFT has a right to improve it's products for whatever reason they want to - even if one of those reason is to compete in the marketplace (the DOJ has people thinking that competing in the marketplace with a better product is some kind of crime. Incredible).