[ale] petition

[Benjamin Dixon]

On Fri, 15 Feb 2002, Geoffrey wrote:

> We should really terminate this thread....

Agreed.
 
> > How have they destroyed companies any differently then all the other
> > companies out there would like to see their competition annihilated?
> 
> Because they are a G* D* monopoly.  Different rules apply here.

So if I start a company and I see that it is about to be a monopoly I need
to tell my employees to quit and go home. "Our work is done here."?

Someone else pointed out that its not the monopoly thats the problem but
the abuse of the monopoly. While I agree, I find it hard for second and
third place onlookers or underdogs (Hello, Sun!) to not find some fault in
the market leader's practices "just because".

> > Besides, some would argue that MS
> > *created*, not destroyed, the consumer OS market (ie. desktops)
> 
> Well they're wrong.  It's often difficult for people to see what the 
> future could have been like, because they're so stuck in the present.

This is pure speculation. There's nothing to suggest that we're any better
or worse off because of Bill G's initiative to start a little software
company.

> > Whether
> > they are good at software design is totally irrelevant in the most obvious
> > way, they are the market leader.
> 
> They are the market leader, because there is no choice.  MOST companies 
> that are not good at building their product, wither and die.  Only a 
> monopoly can continue to grow at such astounding rates with such poor 
> products.

Surely there was a time when MS wasn't a monopoly and people saw virtue in
their products. Else they wouldn't be a monopoly today.
 
> You are truly confused if you think that Microsoft has anything to do 
> with creating a consumer driven market.  I continue to blame M$ for the 
> problems with file formats, since they are the ones that continue to 
> hide their formats and change them from one release to the next.  To the 
> extent that one version of their own product can't properly handle the 
> previous.

Its not so much that MS created a consumer driven market as a consumer
driven market created MS.
 
> This is where you are so misguided.  Microsoft does not compete.

Neither does the "competition" that continues to whine about Microsoft but
fails to unite in anyway other than through judges.

Ben
 


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