Date: Sun, 2 Dec 2001 15:06:26 +0100 From: "Anthony Atkielski" <anthony@freebie.atkielski.com> To: "Ted Mittelstaedt" <tedm@toybox.placo.com> Cc: <chat@freebsd.org> Subject: Re: Feeding the Troll (Was: freebsd as a desktop ?) Message-ID: <00c901c17b3a$8998b2d0$0a00000a@atkielski.com> References: <000801c17b21$a2fb4d00$1401a8c0@tedm.placo.com>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
Ted writes: > I am not aware of any studies that anyone has > done that make this claim. That is apparent. > Care to cite some specific examples to support > your point or are you just shooting from the hip? I already have. High-profile cases included AT&T, IBM, and Standard Oil. However, less newsworthy antitrust actions are undertaken with much greater frequency. One reason Intel tries to keep such a low profile, for example, is that it is a very tempting target indeed for such actions. IBM used to issue small printed guides to its field employees with specific instructions on how to avoid conduct that might be construed as antitrust for the same reason. > And these examples are? Sun has been attempting, in the most ham-handed way imaginable, to simultaneously have its Java language declared an open standard while still retaining every conceivable right to its use. It seems to want a public-domain cash cow. Some people might construe this as an inappropriate attempt to maintain a dominant market position. AOL deliberately modified its instant messaging client so that it would not interoperate with MSN Mesenger, in order to prevent Microsoft from tapping the large AOL IM market. There are _many_ other examples of suspicious behavior on the part of many large companies with market dominance; these are just two examples that came immediately to mind. My personal opinion is that AOL is much more of a threat to consumers in this respect than is Microsoft at this time. However, AOL has very few competitors, and so there are few organizations to lobby legislators to push the DOJ to action. > There is something unique about Microsoft - they > currently control something like 80% of desktop > software for personal computers across the world. > No other company has this distinction. Obviously, it is impossible for more than one company to have 80% market share at one time. But 80% market share is not unusual. Look at Intel. Look at Apple (100% market share). > More rubbish. In a healthy competitive industry, > a series of bad decisions will cause a company to fail. Yes, which is why companies come and go so rapidly in IT. > However once a company has achieved a monopoly > then it can make the worst possible decisions > and it will stay a monopoly, if the cost of entry > into the market is extremely high. No company remains a monopoly by making poor decisions. Indeed, the utility of antitrust actions is often questionable, since they often do no more than slightly accelerate the inevitable. Companies that are poorly managed will lose their positions of dominance of their own accord, whereas well-managed companies will tend to retain dominance no matter what draconian measures are imposed upon them to diminish it. > This is the case in software. The cost of entry > into the desktop software market, particularly the > office desktop software market, is simply too high > because users take years and years to make the switch. Fortunately, there are 100,000 other software markets to choose from. And in most cases, there is a very dominant leading software package in each of them. It's ironic that you try to make an example of Office, since that is a product that people buy voluntarily--it is not normally preinstalled on a machine. > If the monopolistic software company in a market > comes out with a new version that's WORSE than the > prior one, users simply don't upgrade to it. Yes, that is something that computer software companies are discovering, as the PC market matures and fills with users who are not geeks and will not upgrade just for the sake of upgrading. We are seeing a bit of that beginning with Windows XP. Even geeks don't always upgrade. I'm still running Windows NT 4.0 SP4, as I have been for years. > While this does starve the monopolistic software > company of cash somewhat, users will not replace > existing software with new software from a competitor > unless there's compelling need, such as a must= > have feature. It doesn't matter, since if they don't upgrade, even the monopolistic software company will go out of business. It's a lot worse than just being "somewhat starved of cash"--it's bankruptcy. > In the office desktop software that Microsoft > is the monopoly in, most users don't have very > high expectations for their software. Yes. The current versions of Office are fine for them, as were all of the preceding versions. > As a result the majority of them will tolerate > poor version after poor version while they wait > for the next version that's worth loading on > their machine. Yes. > Because of this behavior it's going to take years > and years to dislodge Microsoft no matter how > piss-poor their software is. Try to think things through a little further. If nobody is buying version after version, Microsoft will be gone in pretty short order. The company depends for survival on the selling of frequent upgrades. All PC software companies do. Just having a large user base with Microsoft software installed is useless to Microsoft, if they refuse to continually upgrade. > Meanwhile the entire industry stagnates. The entire industry of what? Nobody cares about the office-automation industry. Everyone just installs a copy of Office and works with that. Just as in professional publishing, everyone installs a copy of Quark XPress and works with that. > Anthony, I find it difficult to determine what > the point is exactly your trying to make because > from e-mail to e-mail you issue contradictory > statements that have no explanation included > as to why they are contradictory. You don't appear to be reading my posts carefully. They are not contradictory. > In several prior mails you made the claim: > > "...Some people just resent the fact that other > persons/companies are more competent or successful > than they are, and cannot accept the possibility > that the success of the latter could be do to > anything except some sort of cheating..." I used the exact same wording in "several" prior posts? Anyway, that's true. It's a sort of sour-grapes effect. Many people with fragile egos cannot believe that someone else can do it better. It's like students who assume that anyone who gets a perfect score on a test was cheating, or that anyone who gets a perfect grade in a class slept with the professor. > Now your claiming that the antitrust case against > Microsoft is unusual because all of the other large > companies cheat the same as they do. It's unusually visible, compare to most antitrust cases, and it is also unusual in that such behavior usually goes unpunished, in all large companies in similar positions. Microsoft has a lot of enemies, and they pressed hard for the government to take some sort of action. > You can't have it both ways. Yes, I can. See below. > Either cheating is endemic and Microsoft got to > where they are because they cheated like everyone > else does ... The latter does not follow from the former. Many companies cheat, but that still doesn't normally have any effect on their long-term success. Cheating will not help an incompetent company to retain market dominance over more than the extreme short term. > ... or cheating is an aberration and the antitrust > lawsuit proves that Microsoft is run by criminals. Such strong emotions! How did your hatred of Microsoft develop? I've always wondered how people come to adopt such extreme attitudes. > Once Microsoft attained monopoly status, all it's > illegal and unethical manuevering is, as you say, > unlikely to make much difference. Before it attained monopoly status, the illegal maneuvering to which you allude would not have been illegal (monopoly status is required for the violations of the Sherman Act of which Microsoft was found guilty). And after attaining that status, it would not have made much difference, as you observe. So it doesn't really matter. > But maintaining that monopoly and getting to that > state are two very different things. Read the decisions of the Court. The actions that violated the Sherman Act were considered illegal _because_ Microsoft was a monopoly in specific markets; therefore those actions would not have worked to _establish_ Microsoft as a monopoly. You appear to be saying that such actions brought Microsoft to that state, but that just isn't so. > It may not make any difference that Microsoft > stole DOS today ... I agree. > ... their continued existence is due to them being > a monopoly ... No, their continued existence is a consequence of making sound business decisions. In your crusade against the company, however, you've probably not noticed that the golden age of Microsoft came and went some years ago. While I expect Microsoft to be a major market power for some years to come, I also expect that the very gradual decline now beginning will continue, until the company makes some serious mistakes and dramatically loses market share. This happens to virtually all companies sooner or later, except very diversified and very well-managed companies, such as General Electric. > And when did I say that I don't? Your intensely emotional reaction to Microsoft's perceived evil is rather dramatically obvious in your posts. Intel is likely to be just as guilty as Microsoft, but you do not rant against it. The same is true for AOL, and Apple. > The FTC action was not a statement that Intel > is a monopoly but rather that Intel cannot withhold > technical specs of it's products as a way of > demanding customers license back patents to it. Now, why would Intel do that? What is the value to customers of that action? > Bill Gates spent his time in the public eye talking > about Windows. That was his biggest mistake. When you become well-known and popular, you develop lots of enemies. > Thus his "time in the public eye" was nothing > more than advertising. No, it was a serious mistake made by a confirmed geek who just didn't understand certain principles of public relations. Now he is suffering the consequences. > You can't be convicted unless your charged, > and Microsoft wasn't charged with cheating > to get where they were. Then your claim that they were convicted is baseless. > To argue that Microsoft was completely ethical > throughout it's history, as you are doing, then > once day decided to break the law and got caught, > is extremely naieve. No large company is completely ethical, because it is impossible to ensure the ethical behavior of thousands of individual employees. But painting Microsoft or any other one company as a Great Satan is the acme of naïveté. > Corporations were required by the Netscape license > to pay a fee to Netscape for the browser installs. All the more reason to install MSIE, which is free. Not to mention that MSIE is technically superior to Netscape. Additionally, unlike Netscape, MSIE can be heavily customized and branded, and this was hugely important to many companies using or redistributing it. > Thus when given a choce between a free Microsoft= > supplied browser, and a for-fee Netscape browser, > everyone used the Microsoft one. Product dumping, > in effect. So where is the harm to the consumer? A good browser that you must pay for, or a better browser for free. Looks like the consumer got a pretty good deal. > I have read the court transcripts and it's shocking > that Microsoft actually believed that the court > would swallow some of the things they said during > the trial. Read the decisions, not the transcripts. > In fact the most surprising thing about the > entire trial was the enormous level of disrespect > that Microsoft showed to the court. You would > think that they had more brains than that. People at Microsoft are geeks for the most part. That's what got them into this mess in the first place. They are good technicians, but they don't realize when they are making enemies. And Bill Gates was among the most clueless of the lot. If he and his company had kept a lower profile, his competitors would have never developed their irrational hatred of Microsoft. > They should have been crawling on their knees > begging for leiency - once they got it and the > case was closed then they could run around and > brag about how stupid the trial was. But > to do that beforehand was the ultimate in > stupidity. Over the long term, it didn't really matter, and I think Microsoft's lawyers realized that. Antitrust proceedings in a fast-moving field like IT tend not to have significant effects on a company's business. By the time a decision is handed down, the entire industry has moved on. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?00c901c17b3a$8998b2d0$0a00000a>