Re: Problems of Reiser v. Microsoft

[James Packard Love <love@cptech.org>]

Howard Marvel raises an important question, will the current DOJ action,
by itself, likely result in continued competition in the Browser
market.  I don't think the answer is clear at all.  The fact that MS is
perfectly willing to *pay* to distribute a product, which is expensive
to develop, for which it charges nothing, makes it hard to imagine a
bevy of competitors.  After trying Opera, a new browser which is quite
fast and uses few computer resources but has an ugly tool bar
(http://opera.nta.no/index.html), and Netscape 4.04, it seems to me that
many people could quite rationally prefer either of these to MSIE4.0,
which is OK too.  But what is the economic model to support development
of these competitors of MS's free product?   Advertising?  Charging for
the browser (NS and Opera are both trying to do this).  If the product
is free, and returns are based upon links to ads or electronic commerce,
the market structure for browsers is likely to be pretty concentrated.  

   jamie



Howard P. Marvel wrote:
> 
> >i got a better idea.
> >stop purchasing microsoft products and products of those who deliver
> >microsoft products.
> >ie: dont purchase a computer from any company that does not give you an
> >alternative, or any other hardware that does not give an alternative.
> >if all of us do this, then ms will either mend its ways, or go out of
> >business.
> >
> >
> >                                             aaa@netcom.com
> This may be the most amusing reply yet. As I read it, it says that
> Microsoft is a monopoly that offers consumers no choices. So it would be
> preferable to purchase from one of Microsoft's many competitors.
> 
> There is a more serious question here. Suppose we accept for the sake of
> argument that Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.0 is dramatically superior to
> Netscape Communicator. This appears to be the position of the trade press,
> and it is surely true that Microsoft is way ahead of NS when it comes to
> HTML 4.0, CSS, DHTML. and the DOM. No hideous, non-standard Layer tag. (If
> you don't know what I'm referring to here, don't worry. It won't matter for
> a little while. But Microsoft has been better in embracing standards than
> NS, with some glaring exceptions.) So now suppose that Justice wins,
> consumers are given a meaningful choice and they choose MSIE. Rationally.
> Now what? Government life support for NS? I think that the NS competition
> to Microsoft has been a great thing. It clearly has caused enormous
> improvements in Microsoft Web products. But what rational policy prevents
> superior software from defeating inferior rivals?