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Technology Stocks : Microsoft - The Evil empire -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: ed who wrote (981)	5/25/1998 1:20:00 AM
From: Kashish King	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1600

To emotional sychophants like Ed who don't get it: For whatever reason Microsoft seems to attract the most untalented and myopic software people in the industry. There are no innovations, there are only badly implemented adaptations. In this industry, being innovative means leading the industry in the delivery of new technology of material practical benefit to software developers or software consumers. Microsoft continually reacts to the innovations of others and it has done so from Windows to Java to networking to object-oriented computing to distributed environments. Unfortunately you can bloat, patch and hack a pumpkin into a horse and carriage as they have been trying to do. Having an unlimited budget helps but it does not eliminate the need to design an extensible system correctly from the outset. Microsoft is simply guilding the cage for consumers and software developers alike yet they haven't changed the paper at the bottom since 1985. As for NSCP, they borrowed a browser (the part you see) based on the real technology (the part you don't see which they had nothing to do with) of the Internet. Marc Andreesen put a front end together which was fine; unfortunately it takes more than a mediocre programmer in the right place at the right time to run a software development shop these days. The whole Netscape story is an irrelevant footnote. As for Microsoft's monopoly position, I'm not about to argue with anybody foolish enough to suggest that they don't have a monopoly. The reasons were already outlined but to reiterate: cheap hardware and existing software investments explain their market share. That also explains why COBOL is still widely used. Now multiply the same factors that keep COBOL going by 100,000,000 and you will see why Microsoft continues to dominate. They will continue to dominate if they can make their own browser a proprietary standard and that's precisely what they intend to do. Only a naive fool would think otherwise. 1. Microsoft has a monopoly for historical reasons only. 2. Microsoft's bloated, brittle, archaic system is the only practical economic choice for software developers. 3. Microsoft is trying to co-opt the Internet. 4. Microsoft has pissed in the gene pool of innovation at ever turn. Having said all that, I don't think Bill Gates should get a pie in the face. He's doing what he should be doing in protecting his investment. He will lose in the end not just because his products stink, but because there are more and better products which will dominate if his stranglehold can be broken through legal action.