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Technology Stocks : MSFT Internet Explorer vs. NSCP Navigator -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Reginald Middleton who wrote (21899)	12/3/1998 1:12:00 PM
From: Keith Hankin	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 24154

Oh yeah? Show me another four year old company that consumated a deal for sale worth 4.2 billion dollars. There is no proof that MSFT did anything illegal to damage NSCP, especially economically since the market just valued the entire company at a rich premium Give me a break. There is ample evidence that MSFT's actions damaged NSCP. For one thing, half of NSCP revenues disappeared when MSFT offered their browser for free, and even though NSCP grew the rest of their surviving business by 100% over the next year, an impressive feat, the stock never recovered, nor was it evaluated on the same level as any of the other Internet stocks. Since then, NSCP's stock has had the lowest price-to-sales ratio of any Internet stock, bar none, because of the perception of being crushed by MSFT's power to control the market. Also, As far as whether these actions are legal, the courts will decide. The DOJ's entire case is a pillar of symbolism. They cannot prove harm to the consumer since MSFT has introduced dramatically lower prices and higher quality products, so they extrapolate biased economic assumptions into the future. I think that it is obvious that the consumer would be better without MSFT's monopoly. If developers had written their code for Linux, the software industry would be much more dynamic, with much better products, since there would be true innovation without one company controlling the platform. Linux itself is a much better OS than NT, and at a fraction of the cost.

To: Reginald Middleton who wrote (21899)	12/3/1998 1:31:00 PM
From: Daniel Schuh	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 24154

Reggie, a former high flier being bought out by a more powerful company usually isn't considered a huge business success, is it? There's a lot of internet companies valued at more than Netscape now. That couldn't be because of the air supply operation, could it? The "harm to consumer" is a particular economic policy argument. So far, it's been well buried in Microsoft's shotgun defense. Maybe it will hold through the Supreme Court, maybe not. The Chicago School great thinkers would hold there should be no antitrust law at all. Do you think the Supreme Court will decide that way? As always, I make no prediction. As far as "harm to consumers", I've always stated that the consumers would be better served by an OS that sucked less. Bill disagrees, apparently, so I guess by your definition that's not what the market wants. Cheers, Dan.