Re: Why Bill Gates Will Win

[Mitch Stone <mstone@vc.net>]

  In reply to charles mueller's message sent 11/7/97 3:06 PM:
  
  >Related to the efficiency basis is the consumer choice basis.  How has
  >Microsoft become a monopoly in the operating-system market (pray don't tell
  >Apple)?  Was it born a colossus, throttling ever dollar from a captive
  >market?  Except for government fiat, _the only road to market dominance is
  >an enthusiastic market reaction_.
  
  This comes by way of a footnote in this debate, but an important one 
  nonetheless.
  
  First, keep in mind that Microsoft's cash machine throughout the 1980s, 
  MS-DOS, would never have provided such great fortune for the company had 
  IBM not failed to protect its hardware architecture, as they had 
  certainly intended. Cloning was an historical accident, and Microsoft its 
  primary beneficiary. Microsoft would like you to think they planned this 
  turn of events, but we should know better. 
  
  Second, MS-DOS achieved its dominance largely as a result of Microsoft's 
  anti-competitive OEM agreements, which effectively shut the door on other 
  OSs for the Intel platform. The 1994 consent decree put an end to this 
  practice, and is now the basis of the current DOJ charges.
  
  To blandly suggest that Microsoft's market position is strictly a 
  function of voluntary and enthusiastic market support is an unwarranted 
  oversimplification. A more accurate analysis would also consider the role 
  of coercion and just plain dumb luck in this result.
  
     Mitch Stone
  +---
     If you don't see it Microsoft's way, then you just don't 
     have enough information. -- Silicon Valley Saying
  
     Boycott Microsoft ** http://www.vcnet.com/bms