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

To: Chris Baker who wrote (7945)	5/24/1998 10:19:00 PM
From: Dwight E. Karlsen	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74651

But Janet Reno said that Microsoft is being sued because consumers have been harmed. 1. Microsoft's alleged tie-in contracts - Such as tieing MS Office with the OS: Even if this does contribute to the dominance of MS Office, the contracts weren't illegal. But because of the MS OS dominance, perhaps Microsoft should not have done these tie-ins. Naughty naughty! MSFT gets fined, hopefully not excessively (of course we all know that the fines will be excessive - that's what this is all about - getting some of MSFT's money). 2. Alleged unsavory business practices - "unsavory" does not equal illegal. The memos I've seen excerpted in the news media so far only document an aggressive sales team with a competitive spirit, which doesn't want to roll over when they hear a competitor has a "Kill Microsoft" sign at their headquarters. 3. Predatory pricing -- In other words, consumers have been getting too good of a deal from MSFT, thus forcing NSCP to deviate from their stated IPO prospectus plan of giving away their browser for free. Netscape needed the funds, and so charged for their browser, in addition to the usual hefty fee from web sites running the Netscape SuiteSpot internet server software. Microsoft continued to give away their browser free. Microsoft is predatory. Uh huh. Make the consumers pay more to Microsoft because of Netscape's inability to make a profit. Consumers haven't been harmed yet of course, but if the government has their way, consumers will be harmed.

To: Chris Baker who wrote (7945)	5/25/1998 1:14:00 PM
From: Deliveryman	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74651

" Connecticut Attorney General, the trial will likely include how consumers (in general) have been harmed by:" 1. Microsoft's tie-in contracts with vendors which have resulted in restraining trade, or Microsofts bulk sales (per CPU) that resulted in lower OS costs to consumers. 2. Unsavory business practices documented in subpoenaed Microsoft internal memos, or Aggressive business practices that added shareholder value and kept the company from becoming another "Ford" or WordPerfect 3. Predatory pricing to stamp out competitors. or Meeting Competitors low pricing dollar for dollar (Borland etc.) Two sides of the same coin?