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

To: Hal Rubel who wrote (8121)	5/28/1998 8:56:00 PM
From: Dwight E. Karlsen	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74651

I think there might be some anti-trust considerations at some point along the line. Hal, I think you've been assimilated by the DOJ. Hal, are you aware that it's completely legal for a company to diversify? And indeed they do diversify. Check out General Electric (NYSE:GE). Last I checked their business was as diverse as everything from credit cards to washing machines. But Hal, what if GE wants to leverage their credit card operations into say, Travel Clubs? What? They're already doing this? My God! Where's the DOJ?

To: Hal Rubel who wrote (8121)	5/28/1998 10:17:00 PM
From: dumbmoney	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 74651

So, resistance is useless? All will be assimilated? Today its browsers. Tomorrow its, what, office suites? Then internet search engines? Then access to internet commerce? And then ...? The whole history of OS development has been one of assimilating funtions that were previously considered peripheral. If Win98 is illegal, then so was Win95, and Win3.11, and DOS 6, and DOS 5, and ... You know, when Windows came out some people thought that device-independent printing was a sinister plot to destroy Wordperfect (one of the main attractions of Wordperfect was its extensive printer driver collection). Sounds funny now, doesn't it? There is a natural bias to assume that everything currently in the OS "obviously" belongs there, and anything not currently in the OS "obviously does not" belong. Those of us who have been in the business a while know better. If Microsoft must be regulated (and of course I don't think it should be) it would be far preferable to simply cap the price of Windows, rather than having doj lawyers designing software. Restricting what Microsoft can develop serves no purpose.

To: Hal Rubel who wrote (8121)	5/29/1998 1:25:00 AM
From: FR1	Respond to of 74651

So, resistance is useless? All will be assimilated? Today its browsers. Tomorrow its, what, office suites? Then internet search engines? Then access to internet commerce? And then ...? I think there might be some anti-trust considerations at some point along the line. HR Oops - Office Suites is already gone (MSFT owns 80-90% of the market). I have two comments: 1) Attacking MSFT: I was simply trying to say that DOJ picked a bad item to hang their hat on. They actually had a good case with MSN. MSFT was simply putting a button on the desktop (in a lot of places on the desktop) that drove users to their pay-for-view web site. It seems you could force some kind of settlement on that. Incidentally, I haven't seen it yet but I think they are doing the same thing in Win98 for their WebTV and TV Guide (the competition should be allowed to buy space). So there are places to attack MSFT but DOJ is showboating the wrong items and demonstrating their remarkable ignorance of what is going on. 2) Near-Term Future Possibilities: I know it is hard to see it now, but the future can make the whole OS thing really different. It goes like this: Economical broadband internet services will start coming on real strong this year with people like @Home. The links are amazingly fast and always on. In fact, the service is so fast you can sit down at your computer and do your everyday office work - with your hard disks at your ISP! Your ISP puts on line any software program you want (all part of your monthly rental), backs up all your data for you, provides you with business accounting programs, human resource programs, etc. etc. Believe me, this is gonna happen fast (it will start as soon as @Home hits the metro areas - this fall). You already have a taste of it: I never thought I would be doing all my stock calculations, research, etc. on line but now I do everything at my broker and never think twice about it. Summary: The need for a heavy duty OS under this picture is really different. The ISP is the only one needing such a big OS and it will probably be some Unix system - like Apachie which is public domain. You will simply be a thin client and so will your printer, backup device, etc. who knows...