ORIGINAL: rhondabrwn
I'm not disputing the ideals of Capitalism, but Microsoft did undergo a lengthy Justice Department prosecution over unfair competition practices and so forth. No time (or desire to revisit that whole case) but Microsoft did use their control over the Windows O/S to their advantage and continues to do so.
"Microsoft did use their control over the Windows O/S to their advantage" - care to explain what's wrong with that ? Others have tried and are trying to capture the "hearts and minds" of the general computer public and they've all more or less failed miserably for various reasons. You can't fault a company that's done most things right (not all) for getting the biggest part of the cake.
ORIGINAL: rhondabrwn
Now maybe WordPerfect, Lotus, Borlund, and others did fail due to inept management decisions or maybe they were crushed by a Microsoft monopoly on the O/S.
Excuse me, but that's utter nonsense. WordPerfect failed because 1) they didn't realize the public's demand for a graphical wordprocessor soon enough (their fault) and 2) ever used their 1.0 version for Windows ? It crashed 100% of the time if you had a document over 30 pages. Their fault again. Lotus got bought by IBM iirc who mismanaged it into oblivion and Borland wasn't crushed at all but still manages to make a comfortable living by supplying tools - like they always did for the last 20 years. I should know, because I'm a rather satisfied customer of them. And have been since Turbo C 1.0
ORIGINAL: rhondabrwn
Microsoft has always played hardball, but they aren't infallible. Their big failure was in monopolizing the home financial market with MS Money. As that story goes, they courted Quicken for a purchase, appropriated the technology that they freely shared, and then suddenly dropped the negotiations and introduced their own competing product. Millions cheered as Quicken trounced Money in the marketplace!
So, in some sort of miraculous way M$ isn't omnipotent, but competitors can and do beat them when they drop the ball - I'm confused now, because that would be a good argument to support my claim that it's the consumer who decides who wins in a certain market, not some scheming by the Big Evil.
ORIGINAL: rhondabrwn
Netscape got destroyed by Microsoft bundling Explorer onto every PC sold with Windows. Fair competition and bad Netscape management practices... or abuse of a monopoly?
Bad Netscape management. See FireFox.
ORIGINAL: rhondabrwn
It's nice to see FireFox taking off, but that product is still competing with a bundled browser that unsophisticated buyers generally assume they have to use.
So ? - it's a market - FireFox doesn't seem to have a problem convincing more and more people to use it - they're not the cry-babies other companies are when faced with M$.
ORIGINAL: rhondabrwn
Game prices... yea, they were $60 for an Apple II game when the market was significantly smaller. I paid that price because you didn't have too much choice. I'm not complaining about game prices today, I agree they are a bargain (even the price of WiTP that so many grouse about).
Glad someone remembers the prices from back then - everyone else seems totally convinced games are more expensive today.
ORIGINAL: rhondabrwn
Business software? You didn't address the fact that when we had a multitude of competing products prices were kept very low. Microsoft could afford to sell their products for very, very low prices to drive their competitors out of business. Once a virtual monopoly has been achieved, prices went up 300 to 600 percent (on top of huge increases in sales volume as the market developed).
Yup, prices go up until it becomes viable for a competitor to step in again. Plain ol' supply and demand.
ORIGINAL: rhondabrwn
I'm just saying that competition is good and once a few companies dominate a market they can charge whatever they wish.
No they can't - charge too much and it becomes an attractive market for other companies to jump in.
ORIGINAL: rhondabrwn
The other point here is that high prices no longer invite the entry of significant new competitors into the marketplace.
Huh, exactly the opposite I'd think.
ORIGINAL: rhondabrwn
The barriers to entry are virtually insurmountable. Firefox is free... would people who have Explorer given to them spend $100 to buy a better browser? If you develop a new spreadsheet... can you successfully compete with Excel, given it's integration with Microsoft Office? Could you develop a new office product if Microsoft refused to make their product compatible? Or, changed file formats with every revision so users of such competitive products would decide it was easier and safer to stay with MS? Can you break into corporate America when MS is pushing them into long term "upgrade contracts"? Can you build a better product when some details of the MS O/S are kept secret? Can you compete when you know that MS has the manpower to take any original idea that you have and incorporate it into their own products (or to build it into the operating system?). Wordperfect is only hanging on because of the loyalty of a core group of academics, but MS is constantly pressuring colleges and universities that use their products to force WordPerfect off their networks. At Indiana University (where I got my teaching certification and Master's), attempts to dump WordPerfect were only defeated by faculty refusing to go along. Since I worked for University Technology Services (UITS) the "word" was that MS was tying our university discount for MS Office to eliminating WordPerfect.
Ok - not going into this one by one - but highlighting a couple howlers here.
"Can you build a better product when some details of the MS O/S are kept secret" - yes you can, and no, you don't need to know "the secrets of the OS" - all you need are the API's - and they've always been open and available to everyone - such a big deal was made of "secret api's" M$ used but on close examination these claims were ridiculous.
"Wordperfect is only hanging on because of the loyalty of a core group of academics" - in other words, political correctness "forcing" them to use the more expensive and less good wordprocessor - way to go.
"Could you develop a new office product if Microsoft refused to make their product compatible?" - re-read that sentence - it doesn't make sense - it shows that you hang-out with the anti-M$ crowd, but are not a software developer yourself. I've written dozens of business applications that tie-in with various other software products from various other companies (Adobe, Borland, M$, ...) - the day you can't do that anymore with M$ products is the day it gets dropped by developers. In other words : strawman, and a pretty obvious one at that.
"Can you break into corporate America when MS is pushing them into long term "upgrade contracts"?" - why not, there's thousands of companies doing that right this minute. Each in their own niche, making plenty of $. In fact my current project is for a multi-billion dollar multinational and it involves products from Borland and Oracle. The guy sitting across me is working on a HP Unix - Cobol integration thingie. My boss is in a bad mood because extremely expensive SAP and SAP consultants are major headaches for his budget. See - all these companies are doing very well, they're all not-M$.
ORIGINAL: rhondabrwn
Last point... look at AMD's suit against Intel over the way Intel has forced computer builders to use only Intel processors as a condition for guaranteeing a supply of Intel products. AMD charges that despite better products (I agree, persoally), their market share has been capped by these predatory business practices. Does anyone care to dispute that we pay less for our CPU's because AMD is out there as a competitor? And where will we be if AMD disappears and only Intel makes processors in the future?
You seem to fail to grasp the major point about capitalism : if the price goes up, so does the incentive for other companies to jump in. AMD isn't the only CPU maker out there.
ORIGINAL: rhondabrwn
Unregulated and unrestrained Capitalism that results in monopolies is not a good thing.
Agreed, but you can only create a monopoly by controlling all the resources. Like controlling all the oil-wells for instance. You can't create a software monopoly and then "exploit" that. There's always an alternative and competitors can jump-in very quickly. A $600 Word upgrade will only result in people not upgrading, switching to an alternative (Open Office 2.0) etc, so M$ sets the upgrade price at exactly the price-point they feel will ensure them sales and market penetration. That's smart. That's fair. And only companies who failed with miserable products ever complain about it.
Greetz,
Eddy Sterckx
and Floating Paratroopers We grew up with Minor, Marginal and Decisive victories why rock the boat with Marginal, Decisive and Legendary?
