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

To: Dwight E. Karlsen who wrote (8254)	6/3/1998 10:50:00 AM
From: mrknowitall	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74651

We're losing sight of the long run implications . . . Even if MS OS market share is cut to 80% - the fight for the desktop in businesses is almost over - the WINTEL client-server volumes are outstripping the SUN/UNIX world rapidly and the consumer market is almost entirely WINTEL or equivalents. In the long run, the OS monopoly power can work to the advantage of everyone as long as it enhances compatibility among applications. Where the danger lies in the future is the economic power MSFT has to keep adding things to the OS to preclude someone from even attempting to round up capital to develop something. IMO, the history of this will be viewed as more analogous to AT&T's protection of Western Electric by keeping everyone out of the communications hardware business until the Carterfone decision. Where this falls apart, though, is that the technological change of pace is now exponential - DOJ or any privately brought action can't get anything done in time to even divert, let alone slow down the deployment of MSFT products. Good or bad - it's what is. If the pace of technology was dramatically slowed there would be time for our courts to appropriately address it, but it's too late. We all have to live with PC's that lock up from time-to-time or software that won't load right the first few times and things like that. And we have to live with the fact that there are things that we'd like to see our computers do that are going to require us to invest in new computers every so often to keep up with the horsepower demands of WindowsXX and the app's that have to run under it.

To: Dwight E. Karlsen who wrote (8254)	6/3/1998 6:46:00 PM
From: M31	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 74651

Dwight -- Re: You in fact are the one who pointed out to me just how large a company is SUNW sales-wise. Wrong again! You have me confused with someone else. I guess I just need to acknowledge that MSFT executives don't have a right to want to develop and sell new products, don't have a right to maintain existing ones, and certainly don't have a right to improve existing ones. Sure they do, but they don't have the right to abuse their dominant position in the software industry to keep everyone else from doing so. As Bob Dole said, Microsoft "may have earned that monopoly through legal, aggressive competition, but it cannot be allowed to violate antitrust laws ... by using that monopoly to then stifle competition, slow down innovation and leverage itself into monopolies in other markets." To which you replied (in an earlier post): As for Bob Dole's comments....nothing of substance there, just typical yada yada feel-good rhetoric. Nothing of substance?!?! Paul Maritz's comment in particular has me RFLOL. Bill Gates' comment is typically cheeky and confident. I don't see anything wrong with James Allchin's comment either. Yet another totally objective comment. Do you also think we should repeal antitrust law just for microsoft? Or are they above that? That leaves us with perplexing problem: Is Win98 just a patch for Win95, or is it a technological advancement? It's a patch specifically designed to cut off Netscape's air supply. M31