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

To: Charles Hughes who wrote (22933)	3/9/1999 1:03:00 AM
From: Gerald R. Lampton	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 24154

If the competition is supporting the 'baby bills' proposal, and have really done some analysis, then that proposal is the one that is worst for MSFT. I'm sure there are a lot of people at Microsoft who would agree with you. But I think you are missing my point. My point is that, if the trade association is indifferent in its preference between the undifferentiated breakup and what you call the focused breakup, then, chances are, the two proposals are equally good or bad for Microsoft. And I think they are right about that, though I, perhaps naively, still believe the proposal would actually be good for Microsoft shareholders. It would sure be nice if the trade association would release this document, which everybody who is anybody has apparently already seen in any event, so that we peons in the peanut gallery, a.k.a., the general public, can see it, and see some of the statements attributed to it in context. I, for one, perceive the document as being extremely unrealistic. On the one hand, they want Microsoft broken up. On the other hand, they want to make sure Windows remains a unified platform, that shareholders and employees are treated "fairly," whatever that means, the stock market is unaffected, and the economy unharmed. It sounds more like Santa's Wish List than a serious policy document, but, since I, like the rest of the public, haven't seen it, I realize how unfair it is for me to make that comment just based on the second-hand descriptions of it in the press that I have seen. But, perhaps that's the way the trade association wants it: keep the document secret, that way no one can criticize it. It brings to mind how the CIA and the NSC used to treat their critics during the Nixon Administration. BTW, are you now working for the MSFT competition in any way? Nope. And not the DOJ or the FTC, either. I'm just a citizen exercising my First Amendment right of free speech on issues of public concern. BTW, as an aside, I ran into the following quote from the introduction to Hayek on Hayek, another book from the University of Chicago Press on guess who, which I think is of some relevance to Microsoft's defense in this case: Menger is credited with being among the first . . . to introduce the concept of marginal utility into economics. More significantly, Menger's concept of utility rested on an analysis of the concept of value that was opposed to the theory of value found in classical economics. For Menger, value is not an intrinsic property or essence of ay commodity or effort. There is no intrinsic value in land or labor or gold, only the value of the use of such factors; and this value can only be determined in relation to other possible uses. Such relations vary from case to case and individual to individual. Only the individual can know what one is prepared to give up or substitute to obtain the use -- that is, the value -- of something else. Kind of drives a stake through the DOJ's browser "choice" argument, don't you think? ;)