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[FWD]Created Wealth [from Tod Landis]
>Date: Thu, 06 Nov 1997 16:48:11 -0800
>From: Tod Landis <landis@cruzio.com>
>MIME-Version: 1.0
>To: Beech Family <tobeth@lava.net>
>Subject: Created Wealth
>
>Subject: Created Wealth
>
>In several recent postings there have been comments
>about the wealth that Microsoft created in various
>software markets.
>
>In earlier postings by me and by Luc-Etienne Brachotte
>you read about a book called Microsoft Secrets which
>describes how the Microsoft business strategy works.
>One way or another, Microsoft dominates markets and
>harvests them.
>
>In the case of the word processor market, Microsoft was
>a late comer. It built a cool product, Word, but that wouldn't
>have been enough, under normal conditions for MS to
>displace the first plausible solutions. So it dumped 450,000
>free copies and captured the market. That worked. Pretty smart.
>Word isn't free anymore, though, and the real innovators are
>nearly out of business.
>
>It may be hard to be sure that Microsoft did not create wealth
>in that market. Don't be confused by the growth in the word
>processor market that followed though. As MS knows, that was
>a market that was poised for fantastic growth because of the
>impact of bitmap fonts, graphics, and WYSIWYG editing.
>
>In the case of the Internet market, which is actually many
>markets, we can all see that we have something that is poised
>to grow explosively...and will grow explosively whether
>Microsoft ceases to exist tomorrow or not. So, in five
>years will we be talking about the wealth that Microsoft
>created in the Internet market? Not if we have sense.
>
>The Internet we have today is the
>result of a huge public investment and contributions made
>by really great engineers like Tim Berners-Lee and Mark
>Andreesen. Neither of whom work for MS. More at
>http://www.w3.org.
>
>(Didn't say Hitler even once. Oops. Rats)
>
>Tod Landis