Microsoft screws up again!

[Imran Siddiqui]

If you say that MSFT is a natural monopoly, how come that others can come with their standards and offer products for signficantly lesser cost, sell them in vastly inferior numbers and still make a profit?

Companies can still come in and make a profit, even in a natural monopoly situation, they just can't hope for significant market share. It doesn't change the fact that the OS market is a natural monopoly.

And the problem with this all is not that they are a monopoly but that they have and are abusing monopoly power to stifle competition, innovation, diversity and consumer choice. Well that should be the problem that the states have with them, including all citizens of US (we all want better/cheaper products), as this is not just and should be remedied.

I don't think anyone is disputing that. I simply think the remedy of splitting up the company isn't going to accomplish much.

[Asher]

Collective idiocy. Wonderful.

Keep up the good work guys.

[Asher]

I'm so ****ing sick of arguing this so I'm just going to sum up my part:

Microsoft being broken up would be horrible for everyone. Horrible for the competition, horrible for the consumers, and horrible for anyone with the idea that the government shouldn't **** around with businesses on the side of the underdogs and help them out by forcing the big "invisible hand" into becoming a "fat Albert smackdown".

More MS == More money for MS Shareholders. A breakup for MS would only give BillG more money.

Despite what some people here seem to think, breaking up MS into Office and Applications won't solve a damn thing. Office isn't big because of "hidden" APIs in Windows. Give me a ****ING break. What's so outrageous you have to question the sanity of people who proclaim that.

IE is where it is because it IS the best browser out their for the consumer, AND because MS gave it away. No matter how you try to paint it, GIVING STUFF AWAY TO THE CONSUMER DOES NOT HURT THE CONSUMER. It may hurt the competition -- but this is CAPITALISM. You snooze, you lose. Internet browsers have begun to move away from being standalone applications the consumer has to pay extra for to standard-issue browsers much like the Windows Filemanager.

The vast majority of people who post around in this thread have no ****ing clue what they're saying, or the ramifications of their suggestions. They're just prancing around saying "MS IS BIG AND BAD BREAK THEM UP W00T".

Now, in order to salvage this farce of the trial they should focus mostly on material like this article suggested, or the OEM-licensing stuff.

[SpencerH]

Nobody ever paid for netscape either.

[Asher]

Um...yes, they did. Until IE came out Netscape was not free.

[SpencerH]

I guess I haven't been on the web all that long, only about 10 or 11 years but I never once paid for netscape it was always free.

[Asher]

I think you're confusing your ISP bundling it with your service and being free.

My ISP didn't bundle it, so I had to actually buy it in the store. It wasn't until IE came out when it became a free download, like IE.

And I've been online for 11 years also, so your 10-11 isn't all that impressive.

[SpencerH]

I wasnt being sarcastic

[Asher]

Neither am I. I was using BBSes in 1991...

[Dom Pedro II]

I'm not even going to pretend like I have enough facts to back up an argument for either side, or that I have anything more than an amateur education in economics, so instead I'm merely going to present genuine questions to the seemingly pro-monopoly side...

How is it exactly that a monopoly or at least a company with a hegemony over a particular market gives better quality services for cheaper costs without competition to act as incentive for doing those things?

Secondly, in the case of AT&T, you say that services became worse after the break up. Why? (An in depth explanation, if you please ) In the case of AT&T is it not true that the "baby Bells" stayed as monopolies in their given regions initially considering that none of the Bells were competing in shared space? And when new companies came in, they had to lay down an initial infrastructure, which the original AT&T already had... does this not complicate processes?



Thank you.

[SpencerH]

You appear to misunderstand. I wasnt putting my 10 years experience out as an impressive show. I wasnt aware that it would be considered a long time.

You may be right about the bundling with the ISP (a university). I do recall seeing people buying netscape "gold" and wondering why they did.

[Asher]

The whole reason AOL/Netscape lobbied the government to persue MS about bundling IE was simply because they want to return to the good ol' days where the ISPs gave you your internet browser.

Why would they do this?

AOL is the world's largest internet provider, AND they own Netscape.

They're not looking out for the consumer, they're looking out for their bottom line.

There are more benefits to having an internet browser be a built in function of the OS than being bundled with the ISP. For one, programs can know for sure that a basic HTML rendering engine will be installed and can just call that in their program (like Napster did, Morpheus does, the MiniBrowser in Winamp, etc)

[Imran Siddiqui]

Secondly, in the case of AT&T, you say that services became worse after the break up. Why? (An in depth explanation, if you please ) In the case of AT&T is it not true that the "baby Bells" stayed as monopolies in their given regions initially considering that none of the Bells were competing in shared space? And when new companies came in, they had to lay down an initial infrastructure, which the original AT&T already had... does this not complicate processes?

The Baby Bells got monopolies over local service. Local phone services are one things that there is a natural monopoly for. I mean, how many times have you seen competition over local phone service?

Most people complained service was worse after the breakup. The Baby Bells weren't as responsive. This occured because the economies of scale that made AT&T even more profitable was gutted. So the Baby Bells had to cut some things when they took over.

[Dom Pedro II]

Ok, thanks, Imran.

I was at least on the right track there...

[Imran Siddiqui]

Yeah, it wasn't bad at all... after all, how do people learn without asking questions .