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

To: ed who wrote (12785)	11/30/1998 3:42:00 AM
From: jwright	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 74651

Toy give it up. Just like IBM had its day in the 60's, 70's, and early 80's, its now Microsoft's turn to shine. Eventually Microsoft will not be able to sustain its growth rate but I don't see it happening anytime soon, unless a recession occurs. But then everybody in the tech sector will be hurting not just Microsoft. The one thing I take exception with Microsoft is their constant use of the word innovation when describing their current anti-trust suit. Everything they have done over the last decade has been a rip-off of somebody else and everybody in the industry knows it. But the Microsoft PR does a great job of putting a spin on it like they invented it. This is why most of the people in the software industry (myself included) really do hate Microsoft. If you come up with an idea that is potentially a billion dollar business then Microsoft will just copy your product, throw it in the OS for free, market the hell out of it, the PR team will re-spin history that they innovated it, and you will have Microsoft executives making arrogant statements such as "Were going to cut-off their air supply.", or "Our product is free what's their business model or plan, how can they compete with free." If Microsoft was not allowed to bundle but instead had to sell the add-on in the open-market like all of the other software competitors then I don't think there would be such an uproar. Also if Microsoft actually invented or innovated something themselves instead of copying it then I would have no problem with them bundling it for free. Of course if they did the latter I guarantee they would not bundle it for free but instead would charge a premium for it. If you read the "Halloween documents" that described Microsoft's strategy against Linux it was very telling. Basically Linux is doing to Microsoft what Microsoft does to everybody else in copying ideas and giving it away for free. In these documents you here them mention possibly taking legal action to protect their intellectual property rights. So I guess it's okay for Microsoft to sue but its not okay for other competitors to sue to protect their intellectual property rights from Microsoft. Spyglass is a classic example of how Microsoft treats partners. They are way behind in internet technology and licensed Spyglass's software and named it Internet Explorer. But they came to the realization that they were not gaining market share and instead bundled the browser with the OS. In order to do this though they had to resolve their licensing fee with Spyglass. Microsoft didn't what to have to pay Spyglass for each copy of Windows so they pay them an outright sum. The executives of Spyglass became rich but I bet little of this pay-off made its way down to the engineers that created the technology in the first place. What about the share-holders of Spyglass their company now has no source of income unless the company can re-invent itself. So Spyglass like NetScape has floundered and can only survive if bought out (perhaps Sun). Oh by the way Spyglass originally licensed their browser code from NCSA. Why is this relevant? Well Marc Andressen and the original core employees of NetScape attended the University of Illinois and wrote the original Mosiac browser that was latter licensed to Spyglass. So basically NetScape was put out of business using their own code. If you don't believe this history lesson then look at the copyright information for Internet Exporer. Then look to see where Spyglass headquarters is located. Ask the Spyglass software engineers and share holders if they didn't feel screwed. Its only through a buy-out via Sun will their company have value anymore. This is not an isolated incident as far as partners go. I believe the above is the reason why Toy is such an anti-Microsoft hater much like myself in that Microsoft gets market share when the playing field is not level. If it weren't for our ideas do you seriously think Windows 95/98, BackOffice, and Office would be the products they are today with their internet focus. Its because of NetScape, Real Networks, Sun with Java, the real innovators, that Microsoft got their ideas to enhance their products with in order to sell the upgrades. Microsoft will only go down when the true innovators give up, and Microsoft has to innovate their own ideas into products in order to sell the upgrade. Unlike Toy though I have come to the conclusion that resistance is futile and have recently re-invested in Microsoft. But not for any of the reasons touted on this board. Microsoft Office platform now accounts for over 45% of their revenue. I recently saw Office 2000 and was deeply impressed with its groupware capabilities. Its enhancements finally make collaboration projects a reality with its threaded discussion notes accessible within documents. Its web publishing capabilities are also improved greatly. I can't imagine a current Office user not upgrading to this product. Did they innovate these enhancements? I don't know since I don't use Lotus Notes to compare against. But in my mind it doesn't matter anymore. In principle I despise Microsoft but if they can make me money then who cares. So because of Office 2000 I have re-invested. I just hope they release it 1999 and not 2000 as their name implies. Since most people here are investors and not software engineers just though I would represent the engineers view. With Microsoft's current practices there is no incentive anymore for myself or other software engineers to spend 80+ work weeks doing what we love if our ideas are going to be ripped off and we are not going to be rewarded for our work. Our only hope anymore is to be bought out by Microsoft but in most cases its the executives who will get the money and not the lowly engineer creating the technology. Myself I just installed Red Hat Linux 5.2 on my 4 machines @ home and will be contributing to the Open Software Foundation my 80+ hours from now on. My hope is that other software engineers will come to this same realization. Invest in Microsoft stock to pay our bills and use our engineering talent to undermine Microsoft via OSF. Hopefully one day you will here us make the arrogant statements "We're cutting off you air supply Microsoft, our product is free, what is your business model or plan? How are you going to compete against free?" As an investor if you don't think this groundswell is happening in the software industry then you better do your research.