Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

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

To: Ed Yander who wrote (10350)	8/27/1998 1:01:00 PM
From: Mike Milde	Respond to of 74651

<< Where is the revenue model for Linux? I can download Linux and Navigator for Linux free of charge. >> You sell support, books, and tools. The OS is free. No different than giving away a web browser. If someone made an OS that runs all Windows software (don't worry, Microsoft has made sure that is extremely difficult to pull off), then the Windows OS would eventually be free also. Internet Explorer is free because someone else has a web browser that "runs" all web pages equally as well as Internet Explorer. When you get down to it, the OS, the JVM, and the web browser all perform very similar functions. They all serve the purpose of providing a low layer of software services and can be mixed and matched most anyway you choose. Bill Gates is not stupid, not even a little bit. He understands the importance of integrating the browser and OS and shifting the consumer's point of view. Microsoft can't afford to be labled as an OS company for too many more years. Microsoft's survival depends on it remaining a "we provide the missing link that you gotta, gotta have" company. They wanna sell that thing between the hardware and the rest of the world's software and data, and they want to make sure you get Microsoft's version of it and no one elses. The market's insistence on open standards would be the death of Microsoft. Mike

To: Ed Yander who wrote (10350)	8/27/1998 1:46:00 PM
From: Daniel Schuh	Respond to of 74651

Sorry, Ed, maybe I was misreading your original statement, LOL. Microsoft is charging for its browser because Windows aint free. which seemed to be in line with old statements from, I think, CFO Maffei about how the economics of IE worked. It was part of Windows, and as such, Windows revenue was properly the base income against which IE development was charged. Or maybe you're still making that argument, I can't quite tell. Regardless, given: What don't you understand here? Browser development is being paid for by non-server Windows operating system upgrades, new purchases of PC's pre-installed with Windows, and now Office upgrades and other tools since the Explorer component is now becoming a mandatory requirement in order for them to work. Hobgoblin man says this doesn't seem to be saying quite the same thing. I still don't quite see how Mac and Unix IE users are paying for their browsers. Maybe it really is "free forever". Maybe it's paid for by straight-out cross subsidy, stringing those other lame OS's along until the Windows monopoly is absolute. That's a different issue. Or do you mean something else? As for Linux, the commercial "freeware" model is that you pay for support, which many think is most of the cost of software anyway. Near as I can tell, it's supposed to be most of the cost of running Windows too, at least in large scale deployment. The TCO studies also talk about the small scale costs of legions of Windows users kibitzing around trying to figure out what's going on. As to being saved by Unix admins, well, when your OS doesn't crash much in the first place, the number of times you need to be saved tends to be somewhat lower too. In my years of running Unix, disasters like needing a disk reformat because the OS totally hosed itself were rare indeed, it seems a commonplace occurrence in Windows World. I hear that the road warriors were among the hardest hit by the "seamless upgrade" to Windows 98, the OS that was supposed to suck less. That story's sort of faded now, though. Cheers, Dan.