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Date:      Tue, 19 May 1998 15:16:14 -0700 (PDT)
From:      Annelise Anderson <andrsn@andrsn.stanford.edu>
To:        freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: Why we should support Microsoft... NOT!
Message-ID:  <Pine.BSF.3.96.980519145457.29139A-100000@andrsn.stanford.edu>
In-Reply-To: <199805190203.UAA24651@lariat.lariat.org>

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	It's fine to debate alternative remedies, but from an economic
point of view (not necessarily always followed in law) Microsoft's 
operating system is a natural monopoly.  I'm actually not sure whether
that constitutes much of a danger or whether the remedies are good in
terms of improving the situation for consumers, which is this issue
my colleague Bob Hall will be talking about in an op-ed in tomorrow's
New York Times.

	There are other operating systems, but the defining characteristic
of the os is that it runs a particular set of programs.[1]  For that set
of programs, the MS os is pretty close to a monopoly: there's no very
good competition (wine, bochs, freedows, pcemu)?  And other operating
systems are not a very good substitute for the MS os, given the
importance of the programs it runs.

	The economic definition of a monopoly is that it has declining 
marginal costs (the cost of producing another unit).  The MS cost is
zero.  Thus, the difficulty of competing with them: of putting enough
money into the alternative and being able to sell the resulting product.

	A venture capitalist with whom I talked at dinner a few nights
ago claimed that his firm is a major player in financing startups in
the Internet field; and they won't have anything to do with an firm that
is threatened by Microsoft (they will finance potential MS targets, of
course--e.g., Hotmail).

	It's possible that government intervention here would be
worse for this rapidly changing area than whatever MS can manage to
do; but its potential is to raise the price, eventually, of the os
itself.  Note that where there are few alternatives (e.g., WordPerfect
for a unix platform) prices are much higher than where there's
competition (word processors for Windows).

					--Annelise

[1] I know this isn't an engineering definition, but it is the
practical effect of the engineering definition.	



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