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To: John F. Dowd who wrote (8779)	11/6/1998 9:40:00 PM
From: Tom C	Respond to of 19080

John, Exactly. Could not of said it better. Tom

To: John F. Dowd who wrote (8779)	11/7/1998 12:15:00 AM
From: MeDroogies	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 19080

Same logic you used on the AAPL thread. In theory, you're correct, and I agree with you. No monopoly lasts forever, and neither will MSFT. HOWEVER, the rules of the game are slightly different here, due to the nature of the game. It's about increasing returns, and how to generate them. Some monopolies occur "naturally", and increasing returns accrue due to the natural arrangement (DeBeers) and how it can be manipulated. Others occur because of state intervention (utilities). Finally, most occur due to good marketing, lots of money, and lots of deception. MSFT, of course, falls into this final category, just as AT&T, Standard Oil, and IBM did. Difference is that the last 3 lost their leads not because of the DOJ, but because they had commodities that eventually had margins chipped away, which allowed competition to grow and the DOJ pounced when weakness was evident. MSFT is not weak, has fought off at least 3 threats to its dominance, is about to dispose of 2 more (potentially - JAVA and LINUX), and has the cash/marketing/deception down so pat, that any available choice other than MSFT represents not a lot of real choice at all. Why is that? Because MSFT generates increasing returns based on a perceived lack of choice, a perception they are happy to continue generating via OEM agreements, and exclusionary deals. NOBODY chose Windows as a standard. MSFT set up OEM deals which prevented people from choosing an OS. Well, not really. They could (and still can) choose an OS other than Windows, but it will cost additional money and considerable time to do so. The same is true of browsers (according to AOL's counsel David Colburn, who stated this under oath). The question is then asked "is this bad for the consumer?" Well, then it becomes an issue of viewpoint. Is it okay for MSFT to offer a low-cost, pre-installed solution? Immediate answer - no, that's not bad for the consumer. However, when you place it into context of all other associated applications and how MSFT benefits, you raise an eyebrow. Then you place it in the context of "well, what if I DO choose another OS?" Then, it becomes a money and time issue for the consumer. Now, other OS's might be cheaper. However, due to OEM agreements, it costs money to not install Windows, and install another OS, thereby adding a cost to any OS that chooses to price itself competitively..... It's a Catch-22 for the consumer. You can choose, but if you do, you stand to lose. Why take that chance? Most consumers are uninitiated, and aren't willing to take the risk and buy Apple like you, or run UNIX like I do at work. Can doing it payoff? In spades, if you're smart. But in most cases, it won't. All this adds up to: MSFT's current arrangement is bad for the consumer. It needs to be altered. One other reason this DOJ case is different from all other before it: the vultures are starting to circle on MSFT like they were on all previous cases. For once, the DOJ moved on a pro-active basis. All previous cases were too much, too late. This one is most likely too little, too late. We'll see.

To: John F. Dowd who wrote (8779)	11/8/1998 3:45:00 PM
From: Michael Olin	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 19080

My lament of the possible need to learn a new skill set was intended to be interpreted a bit less seriously. I would be sorry, however, if the marketplace decides that I should earn my keep using what I know to be far less than the best tools for the job. Then again, I don't exactly have a garage full of Sony Betami (is that the plural of Betamax?). My real concern is that the marketplace is deciding by default. Others have posted here, and I agree, that this is not necessarily the result of there being a lack of choices available. Microsoft gets its software on most peoples' machines because it does the job adequately (my characterization) and it requires little effort. There is really no compelling reason for most of the marketplace to expend the resources (time and money) to go with a non-Microsoft solution on the desktop, no matter how superior it may be. One of my current clients is a Mac shop. The G3 machines scream. This division of a huge multinational media company does lots and lots of electronic publishing and the Macs are great at this. We run Oracle front end clients on the Macs, and it runs OK, but not as well as under Windows. The databases are all on Sun Solaris, no NT DBs here. We have also been playing with the PC simulators on the Macs. It's funny, but a G3 Powerbook running Virtual PC does MS Office faster and better than a 300 MHz Pentium II system (Office 98 for Mac is faster than Windows, though). Every once and a while, someone floats the idea of standardizing with the rest of the company on PCs, but the business is too entrenched in Macland to do that without a lot of pain. I keep thinking back to Apple's lemmings ad for the Macintosh. It just seems that now the lemmings have gone off the hardware cliff, off the OS cliff and are heading towards the applications precipice. I suppose you can't explicitly fault Microsoft for this behavior. Encouraging it is a very good business model, and they are about the best at it. The difficult question is: How do you determine which of the lemmings just follow the one in front over the edge and which of us were pushed? -Michael