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

To: mrknowitall who wrote (10674)	9/10/1998 2:20:00 PM
From: Daniel Schuh	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74651

Mr. K, as I said I'm not going into the definition business, but I got to go back to my profile for a definition on this one. I don't believe MSFT's role is to innovate. MSFT is an enabling technology developer. Uh, maybe. Then again. . . time to define a different word that comes up in that other context, "fair". In 1991, Mike Maples, a senior Microsoft executive, described the company's goals in the aggressive style that its top executives used to favor: "If someone thinks we're not after Lotus and after WordPerfect and after Borland, they're confused. . . . My job is to get a fair share of the software applications market, and to me that's 100 percent." (i.e., applications developers) out there. (from around.com ) Not my words there. Back to your agrarian analogy: The answers to those questions are the seeds of innovations - IMO, MSFT is more like the topsoil in which the seeding takes place. Yes, the soil itself seems to produce some weeds on its own, but trying to rid the world of the soil at this date to get rid of the weeds is not only impractical, but would create marketplace failure for many of the farmers. It all sounds a bit ironic, doesn't it. Of course, farming is one of those old style "free markets", where, you know, there's competition, and the market price doesn't randomly get zeroed. Seems most of the farmers of the Windows "fertile soil" are doomed to "marketplace failure" no matter what, if they get big enough to catch Bill's eye. If they're lucky, they'll get an offer they can't refuse first. Very innovative, that. Sounds like a planned economy to me. Cheers, Dan.