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

To: RTev who wrote (19080)	3/28/1999 4:40:00 PM
From: Michael Ohlendorf	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 74651

The Windows auction idea is absolutely ridiculous in my eyes. The consumer does not want to have 3 different Windows OS. Making Windows "Open Source" would mean to expropriate Bill Gates. How would the shareholders be redeemed ? The 5.000.000.000 shares that will be out there from Monday on would be worthless from one minute to the other. Why is Sun's Scott Mac Neally not being expropriated ? Anyway, Tuesday will be interesting. In my opinion MSFT would be stupid to surrender to such conditions. Beyond that the whole thing becomes increasingly interesting for me as a EU citizen. Will the Americans be really so stupid to slaughter their biggest cash and intellectual property cow Microsoft. We Europeans will be more than happy about such a possible move. Our Linus Torwald "Thor's Hammer" is already waiting for years to create a new Microsoft in the Finish woods with his LINUX OS. We would definitely welcome the thousands of new jobs that would be created here in Europe and I guess you Americans would not be hurt all too much from those thousands of jobs lost in Redmond......

To: RTev who wrote (19080)	3/28/1999 4:42:00 PM
From: Sir Francis Drake	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74651

RTev, my "love letter to the DOJ" was indeed somewhat satirical, but I really meant what I said. There is nothing worse for a company's long-term prosperity than the deceptive "safety" of a monopoly or near-monopoly in the technology field. There are countless examples of overreaching, with fatal consequences. IBM is actually a good example. They were so wedded to their mainframe business, that it distorted their strategic business plans, and were technologically outflanked by individual PC makers. To this day, despite pouring countless billions into the desktop PC market, they are losing money in that segment (recently they announced that net losses for their PC business). It is folly to imagine that MSFT is somehow immune to a OS challenge. I realize that such a proposition is seen as preposterous today, but it the threat always seems absurd, until it's too late. If you don't think an OS can be challenged, I'd like to remind you of the failures of Apple and IBM in that field - at a time when they were very dominant. I'd much rather see MSFT spurred to action, and using it's enormous resources to reinvent itself and attack future markets, than adopt a "circle the wagons" approach... an approach that inevitably leads to attrition and failure. Wagons that circle do not move forward. I think the next 2-3 years will not spell the downfall of MSFT - but it's a time MSFT should use to articulate a new strategy focus on the future, rather than spent in a futile attempt to preserve the past. BTW, I'm not anti-MSFT. In fact, I have owned MSFT shares for many years, and do not intend to sell them. But I'm worried by what I hear coming from company HQ. They need to realize that that they will always be a target - it's inescapable. I'd rather that they be a moving target, than a fixed one.