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Technology Stocks : MSFT Internet Explorer vs. NSCP Navigator -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Reginald Middleton who wrote (19807)	5/28/1998 8:25:00 PM
From: wonk	Respond to of 24154

Because if you truly have a superior product, the benefit will overcome the cost and risk of switching. This is how MSFT captured the suite market inthe first place. While it is true that Ofc captured the market partly due to the fact that the apps were integrated, simplifying organizational maintenance and utility, a large part of the explanation is probably also due to questionable tying arrangements leveraged through their OS monopoly, time to market advantages in certain functionality due to insider knowledge of the OS, knowledge of undocumented function calls providing subtle improvements in certain functionality and predatory pricing. Do you wish to argue that it is a coincidence that Ofc's market share skyrocketed with the introduction of Win95? MSFT has no need to let applications be compatible with thier products. Once they achieve dominant market share, they don't. In fact they do a lot to prevent compatibility. Things like file converters as add-ons, no file converters for the most recent versions of competitor's products and constantly changing their own file formats to make it doubly difficult for the competition (arguably good business but at the expense of their own customers.) IMO Excel and Word are decent products, but not technically superior. Wordperfect gives you far more control. Excel has nice bells and whistles but its calculations are sometimes suspect. (Try the Poisson formula through a wide range of values). Most spreadsheet jockeys keep the big three (Excel, 123 and Quattro) on their machines since each stands out in specific areas. ww

To: Reginald Middleton who wrote (19807)	5/29/1998 12:07:00 PM
From: Thure Meyer	Respond to of 24154

"Because if you truly have a superior product, the benefit will overcome the cost and risk of switching. This is how MSFT captured the suite market inthe first place." Reginald, The above statement encapsulates why its futile to discuss things with you. You offer a tautology as an argument. If I were to question that, I suppose you define superior as the ability to overcome cost and switching. Kind of like fitness being defined in terms of survival. Things are much more complex than that but I have gotten tired of pointing that out and hope you become more serious in the future. I found a wonderful site for you while looking for anti-trust articles. cato.org enjoy Thure