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To: Gerald R. Lampton who wrote (21530)	11/18/1998 3:51:00 AM
From: Bearded One	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 24154

OK, now quantify it and measure it against the "gains" Microsoft is going to offer. I bet you can't. I can't. I can't imagine any quantification of losses vs. gains for any business. I can't imagine the DOJ ever winning an antitrust case if this level of accounting is required. However, in the case of a natural monopoly, which is what the government's "network effects" case is proving Microsoft to be, such is not the case. We're not talking about competition in the sense of some startup electric utility company wanting to compete with the dominant provider. It's more akin to a startup solar energy company, or even a startup offering an alternative to electricity, with the local utility company quashing them. Netscape wasn't providing an alternative operating system. Netscape was providing an alternative TO operating systems (in the form of a different set of Application-Programming-Interfaces). The same with Sun's Java. These are alternative platforms, not alternative operating systems. In a healthy computer world, there are lots of different platforms for programmers to write to. The best platform for handheld PC's is different from the best platform for mainframes. So there is no "natural monopoly" at the platform level. What Microsoft is doing is hurting the platform business through it's monopoly in the OS business. Did I wriggle out of the natural monopoly sinkhole with that? :)