On 5/6/05, Stewart Stremler <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > begin quoting Tracy R Reed as of Fri, May 06, 2005 at 10:33:48AM +0700: > [snip] > > Uh...Doesn't the fact that people had to give away technically superior > > products and services FOR FREE (Linux, Google, Firefox) in order to > > compete demonstrate that Microsoft was indeed a monopoly? > > Er, no, not really.
Not so fast... What Tracy is describing is predatory pricing which is a key component in determining monopolistic behavior and status. That type of pricing does tend to expose a monopoly where the purpose of that pricing is to force a competitor to withdraw from the market. Usually to clear the market the monopolist has to price at or below cost including zero but Microsoft had the sense to hide the fact that IE was so priced by bundling IE with the sale of the OS itself. When challenged they lied about IE being intergal to the OS even though everyone with a heartbeat and a brain knows that the only reason Netscape even got a foothold is because M$ ignored the emergence of the Internet itself for almost 18 mos. when Mosaic/Netscape got rolling. (diff. angles of the same def.) http://cbdd.wsu.edu/kewlcontent/cdoutput/TR503/page15.htm http://www.accc.gov.au/content/index.phtml/itemId/322986/fromItemId/6129 http://www.investorwords.com/3770/predatory_pricing.html I any case there is a lot of discussion and there are a lot of legal minds jumping up and down about this and related issues. What I find most interesting is that to a monopoly like M$, Linux is a threat simply because its focus is not fundementally on market share, profit margins or even ROI... Linux isn't even about, in final analysis, the software getting better... It is about tools that are sufficiently advanced to assist with some particular activity a person might want to engage in (which is why Linux does get better)... computer related or not... And Linux is fairly well divorced from the barrier of wealth for all but the poorest people on earth. And M$ can't do jack about it... except move closer towards a pure monopoly in which they'd want to influence the following: * Very high entry/exit costs or other entry barriers o Ownership of a highly valuable patent, copyright, or trademark o Access to technology or processes not available to others o Complete ownership of a key input o Natural monopoly: Very high fixed costs http://www.humboldt.edu/~microeco/mktstr.htm#conditions Sounds like them to me (more patents, more proprietary etc, etc)... But I don't think even they can pull this off... They can't stop people from coding and using that code. Bill got rich but he never did stop the sharing of information he decried in his 70's memo... and he never will. [Snip] RBW P.S. This guy has very good commentary: http://www.lamlaw.com/ Damage to the consumer by Microsoft: http://www.lamlaw.com/DOJvsMicrosoft/BILLIONS.htm -- [email protected] http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-list
