If he had, I would not be mentioning it on this list.
While this might be true, there are two things.
1. it is far too new to speculate on this. The product structures,
pricing changes if any etc have not been established yet. While my
personal view is that from a consumer perspective, it has lots of
potential not to turn out well, that counts for nothing and we don't
have any facts yet to support an anti-trust speculation.
2. This is such a small industry, I doubt such a small market share
company would attract the attention of regulators.
Brian.
On 06/14/2016 12:41 PM, Rick Thomas via Talk wrote:
Hi Doug:
Have you been contacted about anti-trust considerations?
Seems like with only the JAWS company ownership owning both Jaws and
WindowEyes there are not any other major competitiors out there and thus
this combination would be anti-competitive in nature.
I don't know if that applies to the current combination but has it been
bought up in discussions?
Rick USA
-----Original Message-----
From: Talk [mailto:talk-bounces+ofbgmail=mi.rr....@lists.window-eyes.com] On
Behalf Of Doug Geoffray via Talk
Sent: Tuesday, June 14, 2016 12:19 PM
To: Window-Eyes Discussion List <talk@lists.window-eyes.com>
Subject: VFO acquisition of Ai Squared
Hello everyone,
I wanted to chime in here and give my personal thoughts to the bombshell
released today regarding VFO (the parent company of Freedom Scientific
and Optelec) acquiring Ai Squared. And by bombshell, I don't mean a bad
thing, I just mean it is shocking and unexpected news.
I know this may seem scary to many people. I know that we have a great
number of extremely loyal customers who may be feeling betrayed. There
are lots of legit concerns and questions that I'm sure come to
everyone's minds. But honestly, nobody knows the answers at this
point. We are just starting the discussions internally of how best to
take all our new resources, talent, products, etc. and meld them
together to give the best customer experience. For the next 6 months or
so, it will be business as usual. After the 6 months, who knows at this
point but I can guarantee the customers will benefit from the results.
Nobody will be abandoned or taken advantage of, etc. I'm very impressed
with John Blake (CEO of VFO). I truly believe John is in this for the
customer.
Personally, I'm extremely excited with the possibilities. Think about
it, we now have all the best minds in this industry under one roof.
Instead of us duplicating resources, we can combine them and inovate.
Although Freedom has been our number one competitor since Dan and I
started GW Micro in 1990, I've always had great respect for their
engineers. Okay, I've had questions about their corporate leadership, a
certain lawsuit comes to mind (smile), but that was a completely
different leadership team. That was a different owner and a different
CEO. Vector has an outstanding reputation. John Blake has shown great
leadership and concern for the customer. Under this new leadership and
available resources, I'm ready to take that and do whatever it takes to
have the best possible solutions for our customers, for every low vision
and blind person out there.
People may be concerned about lack of competition causing innovation and
quality to suffer. Nothing can be further from the truth. There is
still plenty of competition out there, including free options but we
have the determination and drive, starting at the corporate level all
they way down to provide the best quality products, hands down. Yes,
this will take some time to prove but I'm hoping that everyone out there
will give us that opportunity. Again, I'm putting everything I have into
this venture and I wouldn't do that if I didn't believe in it.
Regards,
Doug
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_______________________________________________
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