Re: Microsoft vs Justice Department

[Luc-Etienne Brachotte <Luc-Etienne.Brachotte@art.alcatel.fr>]

  Norm wrote:
  > 
  > On Sun, 2 Nov 1997 13:55:59 -0500 (EST), Tibor Machan wrote: (extract)
  > 
  > > A natural monopolist of this kind [...] is no threat to freedom or to
  > > productivity.  Anyone on this list is (largely) at liberty to compete with
  > > Microsoft or Sears (Sears nearly went under from competition a few years
  > > ago).
  > 
  > 
  >      Your arguments are based on the completely *WRONG* assumption that
  > M$ is a "natural monopoly".  Are you so naive as to believe that M$ has
  > done nothing but develop great technology???  I'm not trying to be nasty
  > but that's completely laughable, the only thing M$ hasn't done to garnish
  > their current marketshare is produce a better product.
  
  In "Microsoft Secrets",
  
  page 157 : Bill Gates interview
  
       "Standards increase the basic machine that you
        can sell into [the market] ...  I really shouldn't say
        this, but in some ways, in an individual product
        category, it leads to a natural monopoly..."
  
  p10 : (the books authors)
      "Microsoft has either created or aggressively entered every major
       PC software mass market with products that are at least "good enough"
       initially to set de facto industry standards"
  
  The books shows later Bill Gates position : he's not interested in selling
  the "best" products but "good enough" products. "good enough" (only) is
  important to him.
  
  p138 : Mike Maples interview
      "If someone thinks we're not after Lotus and after WordPerfect and after
       Borland, they're confused."
  
  On same page a very nice sentence :
  
      "My job is to get a fair share of the software applications, and to me that's
       100 percent!"
  
  -- 
              .~~~.  )) 
    (\__/)  .'     )  ))              Luc-Etienne BRACHOTTE
    /o o  \/     .~                           AIRIAL
   {o_,    \    {                         3, Rue Bellini
     / ,  , )    \                       PUTEAUX (France)
     `~  '-' \    } ))
    _(    (   )_.'        E-mail: Luc-Etienne.Brachotte@art.alcatel.fr
   '---..{____}